Birley - Hadrian The Restless Emperor

HADRIAN
HADRIAN
The restless emperor
Anthony R. Birley
K
London and New York
First published 1997
by Routledge
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Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

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Transferred to Digital Printing 2005
© 1997 Anthony R. Birley
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ISBN 0-415-16544-X
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matri carissimae
CONTENTS
List of plates ix
List of maps xi
Preface xiii
Note xvi
Acknowledgements xvii
Introduction: The Emperor Hadrian 1
1 A childhood in Flavian Rome 10
2 The old dominion 21
3 Military tribune 27
4 Principatus et libertas 35
5 The young general 50
6 Archon at Athens 58
7 The Parthian war 66
8 The new ruler 77
9 Return to Rome 93
10 To the German frontier 113
11 Hadrian's Wall 123
12 A new Augustus 142
13 Return to the east 151
14 A summer in Asia 162
15 A year in Greece 175
16 Pater patriae 189
17 Africa 203
CONTENTS
18 Hadrianus Olympius 215
19 Death in the Nile 235
20 Athens and Jerusalem 259
21 The bitter end 279
Epilogue: Animula vagula blandula 301
Stemma 308
Notes 311
Bibliography 360
Index 373
Vlll
PLATES
Frontispiece Bronze statue of Hadrian from Tel Shalem in Judaea.

The torso may originally have belonged to a much earlier statue,
of a Hellenistic king ii
1 Trajan: coin portrait {BMC III Trajan no. 853) 39
2 Plotina (bust from Rome, Museo Vaticano) 41
3 Matidia (bust from Rome, Museo del Palazzo dei Conservatori) 43
4 Sabina (statue from Ostia Museum) 44
5 Hadrian as Caesar: coin {BMC III p. 124) 81
6 Hadrians adoption: coin {BMC III Hadrian no. 8) 82
7 Hadrian's return in 118: coin with ADVENTVS AVG
{BMC III Hadrian no. 1120) 94
8 Chatsworth relief: burning of the tax debts tablets 98
9 Hadrian on the move: coin with galley
10 Hadrian in the west: coin with DISCIPLIN. AVG.
{BMClll Hadrian no. 1484) 118
11 Hadrian in Germany: EXERCITVS GERMANICVS
{BMClll Hadrian no. 1679) 122
12 Hadrian on the move: coin with EXPED. AVG.
13 Head of Hadrian found in the Thames (British Museum) 126
14 Oceanus coin {BMClll Hadrian no. 129) 131
15 River-god coin (?the Tyne) {BMClll Hadrian no. 132) 132
16 View of Vindolanda with the line of Hadrian's Wall in the
background 135
17 A draft letter of appeal to 'Your Majesty': writing tablet from
Vindolanda (British Museum) 136
18 Aerial view of Hadrian's Wall, with Milecastle 42 137
19 Hadrian in Britain: BRITANNIA coin {BMClll Hadrian no. 1723) 140
20 EXER. BRITANNICVS coin {BMClll Hadrian no. 1672) 140
21 Hadrian restorer of Achaia coin {BMClll Hadrian no. 1783) 184
22 Hadrian restorer of Italy coin {BMClll Hadrian no. 1825) 190
IX
PLATES
23 Hadrian 'reborn coin (BMC III Hadrian no. 1094) 216
24 Hadrian comes to Judaea, coin (BMC III Hadrian no. 1655) 232
25 Egypt coin (BMC III Hadrian no. 1703) 239
26 Tondo: after the lion hunt (Arch of Constantine, Rome) 242
27 Hadrian with foot on crocodile (BMC III Hadrian no. 1617) 258
28 Hadrian's Gate at Athens 267
29 Relief perhaps intended to commemorate Hadrian's victory
over the Jews (Merseyside County Museums, Liverpool) 277
30 Hadrian's tomb 284
31 Tondo: the boar hunt (Arch of Constantine, Rome) 285
32 Relief of the deified Antinous from Lanuvium
(Banco Nazionale, Rome) 286
33 Coin of L. Aelius Caesar (BMC III Hadrian no. 1921) 290
34 Sabina deified (Museo del Palazzo dei Conservatori, Rome) 293
35 Coin of Antoninus as Caesar (BMC III Hadrian no. 1017) 295
36 Hadrian: the last portrait (Museo Vaticano, Rome) 298
37 Hadrian rejuvenated? (BMC III Hadrian no. 603) 302
x
MAPS
The Roman empire in Hadrian's reign xviii

Rome: the city centre 11
Athens 59
Hadrian's Wall 129
Asia Minor 163
Greece and Macedonia 176
North Africa 204
Egypt 236
XI
PREFACE
Hadrian has long needed a new biography. The last serious attempt was in 1923,
by B.W. Henderson. It now has an old-fashioned air, with the comparison of
Hadrian to Lord Kitchener, headmasterly pronouncements (Tor all we know, it
was a pure enough friendship between Hadrian, who had no son, and Antinous')
and open hostility to 'Teutonic' scholarship (the work of his predecessor
Gregorovius, for example, is unjustly labelled 'an intolerable compilation . . .
a veritable nightmare of a book'). In fact, Henderson was out of date even when
the book first appeared - he had unaccountably ignored W. Weber's study of 1907,
which was, perhaps still is, fundamental if largely unreadable. At all events, the
great increase in information - mainly inscriptions and papyri - since Weber and
Henderson wrote has made a new synthesis overdue. Monographs on a whole
range of Hadrianic affairs, his coinage, his Wall, his building programmes at
Rome and Athens, his favourite Antinous, the Jewish war or revolt of Bar Kokhba,
and the 'Greek renaissance', besides intensive work on the Historia Augusta,
have laid the foundation. Yet Hadrian has become best known through a novel,
by Marguerite Yourcenar (1951). For all her intuition and literary genius, the
Hadrian whose Memoires Yourcenar composed is a different person from the
historical emperor. All the same, despite the need for a fresh non-fictional
study, I might have refrained had it not been for the persuasion of Peter Kemmis
Betty.
At least I ought to have been well placed to make the attempt. As chance
would have it, I was born and brought up close to that 'celebrated work of
antiquity' (as Walter Scott called it), Hadrian's Wall. It is impossible to avoid
noticing the name in those parts. Long ago one of the biggest local employers was
'Hadrian Paints' at Haltwhistle; 'Hadrian' has subsequently become a trade name
in the Tyne valley for everything from motor panels to mineral water. More to the
point, our house, Chesterholm, was largely built with stones from the Roman
fort of Vindolanda across the burn and my father was an archaeologist, much
occupied with the Wall. When I went to university I discovered to my surprise
(or dismay) that 'ancient history' at Oxford ended with the death of Trajan,
8 August AD 117 - and 'modern history' there began with Diocletian's accession
Xlll
PREFACE
on 20 November 284. The years between, from Hadrian to the sons of Carus,
were a kind of black hole. This was not by chance: ancient history in Literae
Humaniores was geared to classical literature; apart from some of Juvenal's Satires
and, so I believe (not many agree), Tacitus' Annals, no 'classical' Latin was written
after Trajan's reign. A further reason may be that for the years 117-284 the
principal source is the Historia Augusta, deemed unsuitable for undergraduates.
Nonetheless, on graduation I began research on the Antonines and Severans and
'descended into the ocean of the Augustan History' although not 'insensibly',
as Gibbon had. By good fortune I was supervised by Ronald Syme. This post-
graduate work duly led to a doctoral thesis (unpublished) - and to biographies
of Marcus Aurelius (1966) and Septimius Severus (1971), given a new existence
in revised form by Batsford (1987 and 1988).
Hadrian is a real challenge. He was already a strange and baffling figure to his
contemporaries. Can we hope to get beneath his skin? The nineteen words of his
animula poem, his 'farewell to life', have spawned a copious literature. There is
not much else to tell us what really went on behind the elegant exterior, what the
real Hadrian was like - the fragments of his autobiography only reveal a version
for public consumption, likewise the portraits, the coins, the inscriptions bearing
his name from Northumberland to the Black Sea, from Transylvania to the edge
of the Sahara. There were several competing personalities inside Hadrian.
He played a series of roles. For us, at least, Hadrian has to be what Hadrian did.
Even the 'facts', the chronology, and the course of events, are not always easy to
establish, let alone to know why (for example) he built the Wall in Britain,
founded the Panhellenion in Athens, or adopted Ceionius Commodus as his
son and successor. In particular, his prolonged provincial tours, the most obvious
special feature of his reign, are hard to date with precision. Hence there have to
be (all too often, perhaps) turns of phrase such as 'probably', 'plausibly enough',
'it may be conjectured', in these pages. I have tried to provide a coherent narrative
and to indicate in the Notes the sources and the modern works I have consulted.
(The Bibliography could have been much bulkier. I have cited here, for example,
only a selection of items discussed in my paper on his 'farewell' poem. Most
of the Notes are confined to citation of sources and selected modern studies.
Here and there I have added some discussion of difficult questions.) I had
planned to include a further section, with chapters on 'Hadrianic policy' -
financial, military, religious, legal, 'administrative'. But, if I had been able to
finish it at all, the end product would have become much too long. This book
remains essentially a Life, not a Life and Times. The early chapters, relying
on the literature of the Flavio-Trajanic period, principally Pliny's Letters, are
intended to flesh out the Historia Augustas sketch of Hadrian before his
accession. The picture of the man that emerges from the main part is dominated
by his philhellenism. In a real sense Hadrian - very much a product of his time
- was reliving the past. He saw himself first as a new Augustus, then as a new
Pericles or even a second Antiochus Epiphanes. His obsessive wish to turn him-
self into a Hellene and to revive Hellenic culture was to have tragic consequences,
xiv
PREFACE
for Hadrian himself in the death of his beloved Antinous, and for the Jewish
people, whom he tried forcibly to hellenise.
In the four years and more since I began work, I have incurred many debts.
Special thanks are owed to Geza Alfoldy, Antonio Caballos Rufino, Werner
Eck, Dietmar Kienast, Margaret Roxan, Antony Spawforth, Michael P. Speidel,
Susan Walker, Peter Weiss and Ruprecht Ziegler, not least for providing copies
of their own work. Werner Eck was good enough to comment on a final
draft, which helped to eliminate some errors. Those that remain are my own
responsibility. Thomas Pekary's invitation to contribute to an 'Oberseminar' at
Minister led to a more intensive examination of Hadrians 'farewell to life'.
I benefited greatly from the privilege of spending the fall term 1994 at the
Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, especially from conversations with
Glen Bowersock, Ted Champlin, David Frankfurter, Christian Habicht and
Gabriel Herman, and from being able to use, as well as the Institutes library,
those of the Speer Theological Seminary and Princeton University. It was at
Princeton that I wrote my paper on the animula poem and drafted chapters
18-20. Dr Roger Bland (British Museum) and Dr Helmut Jung (German
Archaeological Institute, Rome) readily provided photographs. The maps were
drafted by my pupil Peter Nadig. Mrs Rita Kroll, secretary of the Abteilung
Alte Geschichte at Dusseldorf, retyped a good deal of my first draft and has
given other practical help over the past two years, as did her predecessor, Mrs
Herta vom Bovert, from 1990 to 1994. The change of publisher (not affect-
ing this book only), from Batsford to Routledge, meant some months delay
in going to press; but made it possible to revise a few passages. A welcome
invitation to deliver the Ronald Syme Lecture at Wolfson College, Oxford in
November 1996 involved further thought on 'Hadrian and Greek senators',
referred to in the Notes here. Now is a suitable moment to express again my
gratitude to Peter Kemmis Betty, formerly of Batsford, for his support over the
past thirty-four years.
The two teachers to whom I owe most are no longer here - neither, I know
well, would have agreed with everything in this book. Ronald Syme ( 1 9 0 3 -
1989) published several dozen papers on Hadrianic topics and a great deal on
the Historia Augusta. From these, from his great Tacitus, and from decades
of friendship, I have learned more than can be expressed in a few words. Syme
disapproved, to be sure, of the genre of imperial biography. But he found
Hadrian a fascinating figure. So did my father, Eric Birley (1906-1995) (a close
friend of Syme for sixty years), who read and offered comment on everything
I wrote since I first tried to follow in his footsteps. He was at least able to cast
an eye over a large part of the typescript. I hope he would have enjoyed the
finished product. I am also grateful to other members of my family. My wife
Heide encouraged me to undertake the task. Without her continuing support
I could never have brought it to completion. My brother Robin's excavations
at Vindolanda - which, among many other startling finds, have brought to
light evidence for Hadrian having stayed there - have been a constant source of
xv
PREFACE
inspiration. I dedicate this biography to my mother, my first teacher, who taught
me to read and to love books.
Anthony Birley
March/November 1996 High Birkshaw House, Bardon Milk
Friedberg, Hesse
NOTE
A good many Greek and Roman 'technical' terms from the ancient world
(archon, censor, civitas, consul, etc.) crop up in these pages; likewise, particu-
larly in the Notes, numerous ancient sources, from Anth. Pal. to Xenophon,
Anab. Rather than inflate the text and the Notes with explanations and citations
of standard editions (that many would find superfluous), it seems simpler to
refer readers for those that have been left unexplained to the Oxford Classical
Dictionary, of which the 3rd edition, by Simon Hornblower and Antony J.S.
Spawforth, has just appeared (1996) (OCBP). Both their list of Abbreviations
Used in the Present Work. B. Authors and Books' (pp. xxix-liv) and in many
cases the articles in this 1,640-page long work should resolve all such questions.
(For one source which I cite very frequently, the Historia Augusta, I have pre-
ferred a different abbreviation: HA, rather than SHA as in OCLP.)
xvi
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Frontispiece: National Museum, Jerusalem

Plates 1, 5-7, 9-15, 19-25, 27, 33, 35, 37: British Museum
Plates 2-4, 8, 26, 30-32, 34, 36: German Archaeological Institute, Rome
Plate 16: Dr D J . Wooliscroft
Plate 17: Vindolanda Trust (photograph by Alison Rutherford)
Plate 18: Professor G.D.B. Jones
Plate 28: Dr. Susan Walker
Plate 29: Merseyside Museums
xvn
THE
IN H
The Roman empire: in Hadrian's reign

INTRODUCTION
The Emperor Hadrian
'The most remarkable of all the Roman emperors': so a historian of imperial

Rome described Hadrian nearly a century ago. What has mainly impressed
ancient writers as well as modern students is the man's restless energy, 'tramping
at the head of his legions through his world-wide domains', and 'his insatiable
curiosity'. He spent a good half of his reign of twenty-one years away from
Rome and Italy, on the move, in virtually every province of the far-flung empire.
His presence in well over thirty of them can be documented. It would be simpler
to list those where he cannot be proved to have set foot: Aquitania, Lusitania,
Crete, Cyprus, Cyrenaica, Sardinia-Corsica - and in all but the last his presence
is quite likely. Indeed, on his accession at the age of forty-one he had already
spent more than half his adult life away from Rome. 1
This concentration on the provinces, to which the series of commemorative
coins from his last years gave vivid expression, was focused partly on the armies
and frontiers. He made a clear and unambiguous break with the policy of his pre-
decessor Trajan, abandoning the newly acquired territories beyond the Euphrates
immediately after his accession, then evacuating some lands beyond the lower
Danube. This was followed up by the construction of a series of artificial frontier
lines, of which his Wall in Britain was the most elaborate. Whether these so called
limites marked a real change at the military level may be debated. Their symbolic
significance cannot be overrated — a clear signal to Roman traditionalists who still
yearned for continuous extension of the frontiers, for an imperium sine fine.
Expansion had come to an end - but the Emperor was determined to maintain
the army at a peak of preparedness.
The abandonment of Trajan's conquests aroused hostile reaction; and, further,
it was suspected that the deathbed adoption of Hadrian was a fake, stage-managed
by Trajan's widow Plotina in the interests of her favourite. These resentments and
suspicions presumably lay behind the 'conspiracy' - as it was termed - of four
senior senators who were summarily put to death during the first few months
of the reign. Although Hadrian claimed he had not ordered these executions, he
was blamed for them and distrusted by the elite as a result. The 'affair of the four
consulars' cast a shadow over the early part of his reign. He reacted with lavish
generosity, with bounty for the plebs and tax remissions and a massive building
1
INTRODUCTION
programme for the capital. This included an enormous new temple, of Rome and
Venus, of which the foundation ceremony took place on 21 April 121, the birth-
day of Rome, on the eve of his first major tour - as if to demonstrate that in spite
of favours to the provinces, Rome still had a central role. A few years later he
began ostentatiously to portray himself as a second Augustus.
After his extended first tour - the western part, abruptly broken off in 123
when an emergency summoned him to the east, was completed with his visit to
Africa in 128 - Hadrian's attention was devoted exclusively to the east. In the
Greek-speaking half of the empire, after tentative experiments with the shrine
of Apollo at Delphi as a new centre, he inaugurated an elaborate programme to
make Athens a kind of second imperial capital, as the home of a new League
of all the Hellenes, the Panhellenion. He seems to have seen himself as a new
Pericles, bringing to fulfilment the vision which Pericles' Congress Decree had
supposedly striven to achieve. As the seat of the Panhellenion he chose the great
Temple of Olympian Zeus, inaugurated in the sixth century BC by the Athenian
tyrannos Pisistratus. It had never been completed, even though the Seleucid king,
Antiochus Epiphanes, had lavishly financed its building in the second century
BC. The Greeks responded to Hadrian's Panhellenic programme with rapture.
As the literature of the age demonstrates, they were only too eager to relive their
glorious past. They conferred on him the name Olympios, once given, half in
jest, to Pericles, and also the epithet of the chief god of the Hellenes. 2
It was not merely by completing the Olympieion that Hadrian emulated and
outdid the Syrian king. Like Antiochus three hundred years before him, he
sought to hellenise the Jews. This is the only plausible explanation for his pro-
hibition of circumcision and for his conversion of the ruined Jerusalem into
a colonia under the name of Aelia Capitolina, with a temple of Jupiter or Zeus
to be erected over the Holy of Holies. It was an appalling misjudgement. The
uprising thus provoked grew into a major war. A charismatic leader, Shim'on
ben Kosiba, or Bar-Kokhba, liberated a substantial part of Judaea and occupied
Roman forces in a bloody struggle for three years.
In the meantime Hadrian had experienced a personal trauma. He had been
married at the age of twenty-four to a distant kinswoman, Sabina, a grand-niece
of Trajan. The marriage was childless and - at least after two decades - loveless.
Hadrian was in any case more interested in males. Some time during his travels
in the east he met a beautiful Bithynian boy named Antinous. He took him into
his train and became besotted with him. How long the two were together is a
matter of guesswork. It is legitimate to infer that Hadrian saw himself, in this
as in other respects, as behaving in the tradition of classical Greece, the older
man, the erastes, and the beautiful youth, the eromenos. Such relationships had
always been accepted, indeed, favoured, among the Greeks. At Rome attitudes
were different, although the increasing hellenisation of the upper echelons had
had its effect here too, and Hadrian had been devoted to things Hellenic since
his boyhood, earning the nickname Graeculus. Antinous - it must be supposed
- was Hadrian's constant companion, especially when Hadrian was indulging his
2
INTRODUCTION
passion for hunting, at least on his last great journey, beginning in late summer
128. But in October 130 Antinous was drowned in the Nile. Whether it was
suicide or even some kind of sacrifice, prompted by the advice of an Egyptian
priest or 'magician', or just an accidental death, Hadrian's grief knew no bounds.
The dead youth was declared a god and the Greeks, at least, responded with
enthusiasm to the new cult.
Although Hadrian was able to preside at the culmination of the Panhellenic
programme, the opening of the Olympieion at Athens in the spring of 132 just
before the Jewish war broke out, in his last years he was something of a broken
man. When he returned to Rome, at the latest in 134, his health was failing. In
136 he at last decided on a successor and adopted a young senator named
Ceionius Commodus as his son and heir, giving him the new name Lucius
Aelius Caesar. The choice seemed baffling and was not welcomed among the
elite. Conjecture about Hadrian's motives was rife at the time and modern
scholars have gone even further. There was an angry reaction from Hadrians
closest male relative, his grand-nephew Pedanius Fuscus. He made some move,
evidently late in 137, and was put to death; his grandfather, Hadrian's brother-
in-law, Julius Servianus, by then in his ninetieth year, was forced into suicide.
Shortly after the Fuscus affair, the new Caesar expired, and Hadrian had to find
another successor. This time his selection was surer, a steady man of mature
years, Aurelius Antoninus. Antoninus, in turn, was instructed to adopt the
young son of Aelius Caesar, Lucius, and his own nephew by marriage, Marcus,
thus ensuring the succession far ahead. It seems plausible that Marcus, now
sixteen years old, had been Hadrian's real choice all along, and that first Aelius
Caesar, then Antoninus, were intended to keep the throne warm until Marcus
was old enough to succeed. Marcus had been betrothed 'at Hadrian's wish' to
the daughter of Aelius Caesar before the latter's adoption; his family was related
in some way to that of Hadrian; Marcus' grandfather Annius Verus had been
given signal honours by Hadrian; and Marcus had been a favourite of the
Emperor, who was struck by his sterling qualities of character since his early
childhood. The succession crisis thus reached a happy conclusion. But because
of the deaths of Fuscus and Servianus, and evidently of others who had fallen
out with Hadrian, including close friends, and whose deaths were laid at his
door, Hadrian was deeply unpopular at the time of his death. Indeed, his
remains were initially laid to rest hurriedly at Puteoli, close to where he died, for
he was 'hated by all'. Antoninus had to struggle with the Senate to carry through
his deification. There would not be many who mourned him.
Hadrian composed an autobiography during his last months. Only a
fragment survives, apart from some brief quotations in two writers of the early
third century, both senators, whose works, directly or indirectly, are the main
source of information for Hadrian. In the early third century one of these,
a biographer of the emperors, Marius Maximus, produced a second series in
continuation of Suetonius' Twelve Caesars. He treated Hadrian in some detail:
his overall picture was mixed, with stress on the dark side. But Maximus' Vitae
3
INTRODUCTION
Caesarum are lost, and are known almost solely from the use made of them
in the enigmatic Historia Augusta (HA), composed at the end of the fourth
century. The Life of Hadrian with which the HA opens is a hasty compilation,
not only drastically condensed, but sometimes with curious repetitions.
Appended to the HA Hadrian is a mainly fictional life of Aelius Caesar; and the
vitae of Antoninus, M. Aurelius and L. Verus add a little more information.
Maximus' contemporary Cassius Dio wrote a History of Rome from its founda-
tion to his own day. He may have used Maximus' biography of Hadrian - many
items match the HA closely. But Book 69 of Dio's work, which covered this
reign, is extant only in the form of excerpts and in a Byzantine epitome.3
The truncated state of the two main sources creates obvious difficulties for
the historian. There are, however, other works which fill out the picture. The
literature of the Flavian and Trajanic periods, even if it does not mention
Hadrian, can be exploited to reconstruct the society in which he spent the
first four decades of his life. The poets Martial and Statius and the professor of
oratory, Quintilian, for example, are informative on the time of Domitian.
Pliny's Letters and Panegyric shed a great deal of light on senatorial society and
attitudes under Trajan - a good many friends and relatives of Hadrian were
among Pliny's correspondents or are mentioned in his work. On the Greek
side, there is plenty of useful material in Plutarch's essays (the Moralia), in the
speeches of Dio of Prusa (Chrysostom) and in Arrian's account of the teaching
of Epictetus, whom Hadrian admired and whom he probably visited at about
the same time as Arrian. Arrian became a friend of Hadrian, and some of his
works were addressed to him: the 'Circumnavigation (Periplus) of the Black Sea'
and the Tactica, as well as the fragment of a third piece from the same period,
when Arrian was governing Cappadocia, the 'Order of Battle (Ektaxis) against
the Alani'.
Arrian is not the only contemporary writer whose works have survived. There
are fragments of the voluminous production by Hadrian's freedman, Phlegon
of Tralles, some of them helpful for reconstructing Hadrian's movements. A
manual on siege-craft (Poliorcetica), attributed to the architect ApoUodorus of
Damascus, may shed light on the Jewish war. The Alexandrian poet, Dionysius
'the Periegete', produced a long poem describing the known world, which has
indirect value for Hadrian. A curious piece is the work on physiognomy by
the flamboyant sophist Antonius Polemo of Smyrna. It survives only in Arabic
translation, but one passage is instructive on Hadrian's travels in the 120s.
Works by another contemporary sophist, Favorinus of Aries, are also extant (one
discovered, on papyrus, only in the 1930s). This all contributes to building up
a picture of intellectual life in the age, backing up what may be found in a work
compiled a few decades later, Aulus Gellius' Attic Nights - where Hadrian him-
self is several times quoted - and, above all, in Philostratus' Lives of the Sophists,
written a century after Hadnan's death. Some of the leading intellectual figures
of Hadrian's time, notably Favorinus, Polemo and Herodes Atticus, figure
prominently in Gellius and Philostratus.4
4
INTRODUCTION
There were, indeed, other writers at work under Hadrian. The poet Florus,
for example, whose exchange of verses with Hadrian is quoted in the HA, also
wrote a short history, based on Livy, of Rome's wars up to Augustus' time, which
gives a little insight into attitudes at the time of writing. Another poet, Juvenal,
also wrote under Hadrian. There is one clear dating indication - a suffect consul
of 127 - and other Satires can be pressed for information on the reign. The
biographer Suetonius held a major post under Hadrian, Chief Secretary, or ab
epistulis. He was unceremoniously dismissed in 122, along with his patron, the
Guard Prefect Septicius Clarus, to whom he had already dedicated at least
the first two of his Caesars, Julius and Augustus. The remaining ten biographies,
from Tiberius to Domitian, were probably composed after Suetonius had been
sacked. It is a legitimate procedure to sieve through the Caesars for hints of
Suetonius' attitudes to Hadrian. The same applies, of course, to Tacitus' Annals.
Tacitus' earliest monographs, the Agricola and Germany, are unquestionably of
indirect relevance for Hadrian's early years, when they were composed. But for
the Annals the date of writing is disputed. Tacitus was born in the late 50s and
was thus about sixty years old when Hadrian came to the throne. There is much
to be said for the view that he had, at that moment, only just commenced the
Annals. At all events, whether by coincidence or by design, a number of passages
in the Annals afford instructive comment on Hadrian. 5
If Hadrian's autobiography is lost, there does at any rate survive a variety of
his other writings, both prose and poetry. The exchange of verses with Florus
has already been referred to. There are two other Latin pieces, an epitaph for his
favourite horse and - much more intriguing - his dying address to his soul, his
'farewell to life'. Some of his speeches and official letters, mostly fragmentary,
preserved on stone or on papyrus, and some of his legal responses, cited in
particular in the Digest, make up a considerable body of material in total. There
is also the curious collection of Sententiae Hadriani, evidently his impromptu
responses to petitioners for the most part, preserved as a school exercise for
translation into Greek. 6
Comment on Hadrian, implicit and explicit, from the period immediately
after his death, is provided by the orators Fronto and Aelius Aristides. The
former's letters, resembling in many ways those of Pliny a generation earlier,
likewise shed some light on Hadrian's circle. A contemporary of these two,
Pausanias, registers a series of benefactions by Hadrian in Greece, particularly at
Athens, in his Guidebook composed in the early 170s. Later in the century a few
anecdotes are included in the voluminous corpus of the doctor Galen and in the
Deipnosophistae of Athenaeus.
The above summary account by no means exhausts the 'literary' sources for
Hadrian and his reign: there are also Jewish and Christian writings, in which, of
course, the main focus is on religion and on the Jewish war - together with some
unfriendly comments on Antinous. Further, horoscopes of Hadrian and of his
grand-nephew Fuscus compiled in the late second century were quoted by the
fourth-century writer Hephaestio of Thebes. Finally, a little may be gleaned
5
INTRODUCTION
from the fourth-century chroniclers Aurelius Victor, Eutropius, Festus and the
unknown author of the Epitome de Caesaribus - owing something, the latter
especially, to the lost work of Marius Maximus. 7
Over and above this the historian can turn to a great mass of primary
material: coins, inscriptions, papyri and archaeological remains. The numis-
matic evidence includes not only the issues from the imperial mint but the local
coinage of the Greek east, of which that of Alexandria in Egypt in the most
informative. It is at least dated, whereas after 119, when Hadrian held his third
consulship, precise dating disappears from the other issues - the annually
renewed tribunicia potestas is omitted. The only sure guide is the title pater
patriae, assumed in 128, and, in the east, the title Olympios from 129 onwards.
But at least the broad chronological framework has been established - and some
of the issues, in particular the 'province' and 'army' series, recalling, near the end
of the reign, Hadrian's provincial tours, are extremely instructive. Further, the
coinage issued by the rebels in Judaea provides precious indications about the
nature of Bar Kokhba's regime.
Inscriptions are also available in profusion. Of especial value is the statue
base from Athens giving the career up to his first consulship (108) of Hadrian
himself. Comparable stones, with career details of dozens of senatorial and
equestrian office-holders, allow the identification of Hadrians principal coadjutors.
One may mention also the diplomas issued to veterans, invaluable for recon-
structing military history. The poems composed by Julia Balbilla, friend of the
Empress, carved on the Colossus of Memnon at Thebes on the occasion of the
imperial visit to Egypt, are just one striking example of the epigraphic evidence
from the period, too copious and variegated to summarise further. The papyri,
mainly deriving from Egypt, naturally shed light mostly on that province.
Apart from small items which help to document Hadrian's stay there, fragments
of two literary works celebrating Antinous have been found, also the beginning
of a letter from Hadrian to his designated successor Antoninus, which may be
identified as coming from his autobiography. A wholly new source of papyri,
in the Judaean desert, comprises documents and letters in Greek and Aramaic,
deriving from Jewish refugees hiding at the end of the revolt. Only the Greek
papyri have so far been published in full, but they, and, even more, the still
incompletely available Aramaic texts, give unique insight into the workings of the
rebel state.
Inscriptions and coins combine to date many of the surviving remains
from the reign - not least Hadrian's Wall. But all over the empire, and in
particular in Rome and in Athens, major buildings for which Hadrian was
responsible or with which he was associated still survive in ruined state, or, in
the case of the Pantheon and his Mausoleum at Rome or Hadrian's Gate at
Athens, complete. The great Villa at Tibur continues to be the subject of
research. Historical reliefs, for example the so-called tondi from a Hadrianic
hunting monument at Rome, and the obelisk with hieroglyphic inscriptions,
now at Rome but originally at Antinoopolis, engage scholars in debate. Scores
6
INTRODUCTION
of sculpted portraits of Hadrian, many of Sabina, and a good hundred of
Antinous, have been intensively studied.
There is thus, all told, evidence on Hadrian in abundance. But it is far from
easy to put it together. The first serious study was by a French cleric, J.-G.-H.
Greppo, in 1842. He focused on the imperial journeys, with special attention
to the coinage. But, after introductory discussion, he confessed that because of
the difficulty of the evidence, he did not feel able to attempt a 'classement
chronologique de ces voyages'.8 A few years later, in 1851, there appeared a
History of the Roman Emperor Hadrian and of his Times by a young German
academic, F. Gregorovius. It was clearly widely read, and over thirty years later
the author, who had in the meantime devoted himself to the history of medieval
Rome, produced a second edition, under the title The Emperor Hadrian. Scenes
from the Roman-Hellenic World in his Times (1884). Gregorovius was immensely
learned and wrote attractively. It is no surprise that an English translation
appeared in 1898. But meanwhile German scientific scholarship had begun to
take inscriptions (not of course neglected by Gregorovius) more seriously into
account. A doctoral dissertation on Hadrian's journeys was published in 1881
by J. Diirr. In 1890 came another monograph, devoting particular attention to
the sources for the reign, by J. Plew, who had already written a dissertation on
Marius Maximus. The year before H. Dessau had published his epoch-making
study of the Historia Augusta, showing that it was by a single author, not six,
writing in the late fourth century, not under Diocletian and Constantine. 9
A rash of scholarly work on the HA and the period it covered began to pour out.
O.T. Schulz tackled Hadrian in the light of new ideas on the HA in 1904,
followed a year later by E. Kornemann. Neither work is without merit, but both
propounded wholly fanciful ideas on the sources of the HA, obsessed with the
idea that there were two main sources, a 'factual' author (labelled by Kornemann
'the last great historian of Rome') and an unserious, biographical author, a
purveyor of court gossip.
Schulz and Kornemann were rapidly rendered obsolete by a work of very
different quality, by Wilhelm Weber, which appeared in 1907. Weber for the
first time assembled a really substantial mass of epigraphic, numismatic and
papyrological evidence to date the main events in Hadrian's reign down to the
Jewish war, concentrating in effect on the journeys. This monograph is unlikely
to be superseded as a collection of evidence, even though it needs correcting
in many places. It has to be said, though, that in spite of a few purple passages,
it is a work to consult, not to read. The year after Weber's dissertation, A. v.
Premerstein published a short monograph on the 'conspiracy of the four
consulars', attempting to use a passage in Polemo's De physiognomia to date and
explain this episode.
Sixteen years after Weber's book there appeared The Life and Principate of the
Emperor Hadrian by the Oxford don B.W. Henderson. Curiously, although the
author mentions in his Preface that he had been urged to write the book fifteen
years before by H.F. Pelham, then Camden Professor of Ancient History at
7
INTRODUCTION
Oxford - surely because of the appearance of Weber's book - Henderson
nowhere refers to Weber. This was not because he ignored German - or
'Teutonic' - scholarship, which he frequently finds occasion to pour scorn on in
a disagreeably aggressive manner. Henderson certainly managed to produce a
more readable account than his predecessor, and he is still often cited - for this
was to remain, as it turned out, the latest at all scholarly biography of Hadrian
for over sixty years. The book by B. d'Orgeval (1950), in spite of its title, is really
just an attempt to discuss Hadrian's contribution to the development of Roman
law. There are, it is true, some more recent biographies, but none that can be
called works of scholarship. One should also note two studies of Hadrians life
before his accession, by W.D. Gray (1919) and L. Perret (1935) - the latter also
produced a short monograph on Hadrian's titulature as emperor. 10
In spite of the lack of a new biography, since Henderson wrote there has been
a remarkable series of monographs dealing with aspects of Hadrian and his
reign. The coinage early received intensive treatment. P.L. Strack's substantial
volume appeared in 1933, followed a year later by J.M.C. Toynbee on the
Hadrianic province coins, and in 1936 by the third instalment of H . Mattingly's
Coins of the Roman Empire in the British Museum (referred to as BMC III in the
Notes to this volume), covering Nerva to Hadrian, in which Introduction and
catalogue together devote some 300 pages to Hadrian. There have more recently
been monographs on the cistophori minted under Hadrian in the province Asia,
by W.E. Metcalf, and on the rebel Jewish coins, by L. Mildenberg. Hadrian's
Wall in Britain has been repeatedly treated. One may single out here the attempt
to interpret the stages of its building, by C.E. Stevens, the book by E. Birley
on the history of research and the now standard work by D.J. Breeze and B.
Dobson. Hadrian's building programmes in Rome and in Athens have recently
been given detailed analysis in monographs by M . T Boatwright and D . Willers
respectively. Athens under Hadrian had already been the theme of a still
useful book by P. Graindor (1934). The Villa at Tivoli has received repeated
attention. 11
The Jewish war has been handled in several monographs, for example by
S. Applebaum and P. Schafer. The portraiture of Hadrian - together with the
imperial women associated with him - was the subject of a volume by M.
Wegner, published in 1956. That on Sabina by A. Carandini (1969) is focused
principally on the iconography. Antinous has also attracted much attention.
R. Lambert's Beloved and God (1984) is a remarkable attempt at a biography of
the imperial favourite, which must not be underrated. The two recent volumes
by H . Meyer deal respectively with the iconography and with the obelisk.
Apart from these 'Hadrianic' monographs, various other works have shed
valuable light on the period. One must note, above all, H . Halfmann's study of
imperial journeys (1986), where the detailed section on Hadrian's own travels
must be consulted constantly by anyone dealing with the reign. Hadrian and
his age occupy a good hundred and fifty pages of J. Beaujeu's book on Roman
religion in the Antonine period (1955). Further, ten contributions, by A. Garcia
8
INTRODUCTION
y Bellido and others, in the volume Les empereurs romains d'Espagne (1965) are
devoted in whole or in part to Hadrian. One of these, by R. Syme, on 'Hadrian
the intellectual', was among the earliest of what were to amount to more than
a score of papers by Syme on Hadrian. Syme's massive monograph on Tacitus
(1958) , in which he again and again points to echoes of Hadrian in the Annals,
was of course an earlier harbinger of his numerous Hadrianic studies. 12
Preserved among his papers is an outline of 'The Reign of Hadrian as Tacitus
might have conceived it'. He noted that several Roman historical writers lived
to an advanced age - and at the time of Hadrians death Tacitus would have just
passed eighty, had he survived. (Syme himself was about eighty-three when
he made these notes.) The 'Tacitean' monograph on Hadrian was conceived in
five books: Book I would have covered the years 117-121, II 121-123 or 125,
III 123 or 125 to 128 - with 128 noted as a turning point in the reign, IV
128 to 134 and V 134 to 138. Suitable subjects for digressions were noted, for
example Dacia and the Sarmatians, Prefects of Rome, Britain, the Parthian ques-
tion, military discipline, philhellenism, Egypt and its monuments, Hadrian's
travelling companions, the Jews and the Alani.
The vita Hadriani in the HA has received two commentaries, in English by
H.W. Benario (1980), in French by J.P. Callu and others (1992). A collection
of sources, mainly epigraphic, for the reigns of Nerva, Trajan and Hadrian
by E.M. Smallwood (1966) had in the meantime made much of the primary
evidence easily accessible; and J.H. Oliver's postumously published collection
of Greek constitutions of Roman emperors (1989) has made a good many
important Hadrianic texts more intelligible. Finally, a work of a very different
nature must be mentioned: the novel by Marguerite Yourcenar, Les memoires
d'Hadrien, published in 1951. This book has received enormous acclaim and its
literary merits are unquestioned. Yet the personality there portrayed seems to
have been accepted by not a few scholars as an authentic representation of the
'real Hadrian'. Whether Yourcenars Hadrian is in fact so close to the real man
is another matter. 13
The ancient sources at least give us an idea of Hadrian's person: a tall and
imposing figure - and extremely fit, for he rode and walked a good deal, prac-
tised with weapons and at throwing the javelin, and hunted frequently. He was
also elegant, 'his hair curled on a comb' and with a full beard, which was kept
well trimmed. His eyes were, supposedly, bright and piercing. He could be
'pleasant to meet and had a certain charm', and he mingled readily with his
humblest subjects, more of whom must have seen him than any other emperor.
But his 'insatiable ambition', his burning wish to excel and to score points at the
expense of the experts in every field, clearly made him a uncomfortable person
to know. 14
9
1
A C H I L D H O O D IN FLAVIAN
ROME
On the ninth day before the Kalends of February, when the consuls were the
Emperor Vespasian, for the seventh time, and Titus Caesar, for the fifth time, a
son was born at Rome to Domitia Paulina, wife of the young senator Aelius
Hadrianus Afer. Thus the Historia Augusta (HA) records the birth of the future
emperor Hadrian, on 24 January of the year 76 - at Rome, rather than at Italica
in southern Spain, the home of his father. For senators their official domicile
was Rome and most of them, particularly those holding or seeking one of the
traditional magistracies, did indeed reside there. Cassius Dio registers the father's
name as Hadrianus Afer, describing him as a senator and ex-praetor. That might
simply mean that Afer reached the praetorship in the course of his career. But it
is likely enough that he had been praetor a year or two before Hadrian was born.
Chance has preserved on papyrus part of a letter Hadrian wrote to Antoninus
just before his death: he mentions that his father lived only to his fortieth year.
Afer died when Hadrian was in his tenth year, the HA reports, and was thus
twenty-nine or thirty when his son was born, precisely the standard age for the
praetorship. He could have held the office earlier. Augustus' legislation allowed
senators a year off the minimum age for magistracies for each child, and Afer
also had a daughter, named after her mother, probably older than Hadrian.1
Neither the HA nor other sources offer further details on Hadrian's first nine
years - except for a single inscription, which records the name of the future
emperor's wet-nurse, Germana, no doubt a slave. Like other women of high
rank, Paulina did not breast-feed her son. Germana, to judge from her name,
may have been of northern barbarian origin. She was later given her freedom
and would outlive Hadrian. The vita does supply a single telling detail about
Hadrian's mother and considerable information on his father's family. Domitia
Paulina 'came from Gades [Cadiz]'. This was the oldest city in Spain and,
according to tradition, the earliest of all the Phoenician settlements in the west,
going back to the late second millennium BC. After centuries of independence
and indeed dominance in southern Spain, Gades had fallen under Carthaginian
control at the latest in the time of Hannibal's father Hamilcar Barca. After a few
decades Gades switched allegiance during the Hannibalic War and was received
by Rome into alliance in 206 BC. Several of its sons became Roman citizens.
10
Map 1 Rome: the city centre
A CHILDHOOD IN FLAVIAN ROME
The most prominent was L. Cornelius Balbus, who achieved immense influence
as Caesar's agent and after the dictators death was actually made a member
of the Roman Senate and consul in 40 BC, the first consul not to have been
Italian born. In the meantime Caesar had conferred citizenship on the entire
community. Gades' wealth was proverbial. Balbus himself had been extremely
rich. In the Augustan age there were five hundred Gaditani with the equestrian
property-qualification. Several men from these families must have followed
Balbus into the Senate. One may readily postulate that Domitia Paulinas father,
if not indeed earlier generations of the family, had achieved this rank. The
ultimate descent was, of course, Punic: the family name Domitia points to
descent from a person enfranchised through the good offices of one of the noble
Republican Domitii. 2
The paternal line was very different. The Aelii had been settled at Italica,
some 5 miles (8 km) upstream from Hispalis (Seville), since 'the time of the
Scipios'. In other words, an ancestor had been one of the 'sick or wounded
soldiers' of P. Cornelius Scipio's army in Spain, left behind in a new settlement
when he was about to return to Rome in 206 BC - the same year in which Gades
had received its treaty-status - 'in a town which he named Italica after Italy'.
The place was not a colonia, although it would later become a municipium, and
the soldiers were doubtless allied Italians, not Roman citizens. The first Aelius
of Italica came from Hadria on the east coast of Italy, as Hadrian was careful
to note in his autobiography. Some two hundred years later, a member of the
family, Hadrian's atavus Marullinus, his great-grandfather's grandfather, had
entered the Roman Senate. Hence, even if the intervening generations did not
serve as Roman senators, the Aelii were certainly one of the leading families of
Italica, indeed of the whole province of Baetica. Two other Italica families with
whom they shared this position may be identified, the Ulpii and the Trahii or
Traii, the ancestors of Trajan. One or both derived from Tuder (Todi) in
Umbria, and, like the Aelii, their settlement at Italica probably went back to the
foundation in 206 BC.3
Hadrian's link with Trajan is stressed in the HA, his father Hadrianus Afer
being described as 'a cousin (consobrinus) of the Emperor Trajan'. It is generally
assumed that Hadrian's grandfather had married an aunt of Trajan, or, to put it
another way, a sister of the elder Trajan, M. Ulpius Traianus. This man, who
was thus Hadrian's great-uncle, was one of the most powerful and influential
persons of the day. He was in the east at the time of Hadrian's birth, as governor
of Syria, and his son, Hadrian's father's cousin, was with him, as a military
tribune. Traianus owed his distinction in part, no doubt, to his military capacity,
but also to a fortunate chance: he had been commanding X Fretensis, as one of
the three legionary legates in the expeditionary force in Judaea led by Vespasian
from late 66 onwards. Hence he was one of the men on the spot when his
commander-in-chief was proclaimed emperor in July 69. Two other legionary
legates in Judaea in this expedition had been a man from Vespasian's home town,
Reate (Rieti), Sex. Vettulenus Cerialis - and Vespasian's own son Titus. It looks
12
as if Vespasian had been allowed to choose these two legates himself - a most
exceptional circumstance. Perhaps Traianus was also Vespasian's choice. There
are hints that his wife Marcia owned property at the confluence of the Tiber and
the Nar, equidistant between Tuder and Reate; and Marcia may have been
a sister of Titus' first wife Marcia Furnilla. Be this as it may, as an old comrade-
in-arms of the Emperor and of his elder son Titus Caesar, Traianus had a status
in the 70s that was clearly exceptional. Besides, as governor of Syria he demon-
strated his prowess, deterring a threatened Parthian invasion. 4
The Aelii and Ulpii were no doubt wealthy. Membership of the Senate after
all demanded a substantial property qualification. The Aelii - it is no surprise -
owned productive olive plantations upstream from Italica. During the Civil
Wars of 4 9 - 4 5 BC men from Italica had played a prominent role in the Spanish
campaigns - but mostly on the side of the Pompeians. It may be conjectured
that Hadrian's ancestor Marullinus had supported Caesar and that he acquired
senatorial rank as a reward. The rise of the colonial elite - in particular from
Gallia Narbonensis and from Baetica - continued under the Julio-Claudian
dynasty, accelerated by the influence of the Guard Prefect Afranius Burrus of
Vasio (Vaison-la-Romaine) and Annaeus Seneca of Corduba (Cordoba), Nero's
principal advisers for the first part of his reign. That Nero's immediate successor
Galba had been for many years governor of Hispania Tarraconensis at the time
of his proclamation in 68 gave a further boost to the fortunes of the Spanish
Romans; and Vespasian had signalled a new step forward in 7 3 - 4 when he
conferred Latin status on all Spanish communities that were not yet Roman or
Latin. 5
Thus 'colonial' magnates had held the highest offices at Rome in some num-
bers by the time of Hadrian's birth. Valerius Asiaticus of Vienna (Vienne) had
been consul ordinarius (holding office for the second time) in AG. Pedanius
Secundus of Barcino (Barcelona) had even been Prefect of Rome under Nero. In
the mid-70s there were several dozen families from the western provinces in the
ranks of the Senate - joined by a handful from the Greek-speaking east who had
jumped on the Flavian bandwagon in 69. As censors in 73 and 74 Vespasian
and Titus had even granted patrician status, membership of the primeval
aristocracy of Rome, to some provincials. Among those favoured were the Ulpii
Traiani, the Annii Veri from the Baetican colonia of Ucubi (Espejo), Cn. Julius
Agricola from Forum Iulii (Frejus) in Narbonensis, who would shortly be consul
(perhaps in 76, a few months after Hadrian's birth) and then governor of Britain,
and, from Gallic Nemausus (Nimes), the brothers Domitii, Lucanus and
Tullus. 6
Hadrian's family presumably spent the winters at Rome and the hot summer
months at a cooler suburban retreat. The odds are that they already had, or
would soon acquire, a villa at Tibur (Tivoli), where there was a cluster of Spanish
notables with country houses in the Flavian period. Whether Hadrian's parents
took him back to the old family home in his early childhood is rather doubtful.
Contact with Italica and supervision of the family estates in Baetica could have
13
been largely dealt with through bailiffs. Senators were expected to live at Rome,
their official place of residence, except when on government service elsewhere.
Besides, Hadrianus Afer, as a recent praetor, must be assumed to have held
several posts in public service in the years immediately following his son's birth.
Command of a legion is a strong possibility - up to half of the praetors each
year would be called upon, particularly since Vespasian evidently made the
praetorship a preliminary qualification for this post (previously younger men
had become legionary legates, as in the case of Titus, legate of XV Apollinaris
at the age of twenty-seven, having gone no further than the quaestorship). This
could have been followed by the governorship of one of the 'imperial' provinces,
as pro-praetorian legatus Augusti — thus Julius Agricola, praetor in 68, legate of a
legion in Britain and then, for a little less than three years, governor of
Aquitania. 7
Less demanding posts were also available, for example, for twelve months
only, as legate to one of the ten proconsuls, and then another twelve months -
according to the rules, no earlier than five years after the praetorship - as pro-
consul of one of the eight proconsular provinces reserved for ex-praetors. The
majority of the proconsulships were of provinces in the Greek-speaking half
of the empire. One of the few proconsular provinces in the west was Baetica
- which Traianus had governed under Nero. The legate or proconsul would
certainly take his wife and children with him, furthermore. Hence there is a
distinct possibility that Hadrian, as a child, spent a year or two in the Greek
east. This remains no more than a guess. It may, nonetheless, be noted that
Traianus was proconsul of Asia in 7 9 - 8 0 . The proconsuls of Asia and Africa
were drawn from the ex-consuls and the former could nominate three legati.
One of Traianus' legates is known, T Pomponius Bassus, who might have been
a fellow-Spaniard. Another was probably one of the new Greek senators,
A. Julius Quadratus of Pergamum. The third — it is no more than a guess — could
well have been the proconsul's nephew, Hadrianus Afer.8
That the child Hadrian could have accompanied his parents to Ephesus,
Smyrna and other ancient and opulent cities of the province Asia is at least
worth a thought. Childhood impressions are important and most people's
earliest memories go back to about the age of three or four. Even more enticing
is the thought that Afer could easily have been proconsul of Achaia in the early
80s, when Hadrian would have been a boy of four or five. Still, there is no need
to invoke such speculation to explain how someone who grew up in Flavian
Rome would be so attracted to all things Hellenic. Rome was by then - and had
been indeed for over a century - in a real sense the largest Greek city in the
world. That is to say, in the same way that at one time Glasgow was the largest
Irish city or New York had the largest Jewish population, the Greek-speaking
inhabitants of Rome had probably long outnumbered those of any Greek polis
in the east. Greek culture in the capital had been further boosted by Nero's
enthusiastic philhellenism and had not declined with his downfall. Some of it
was no doubt very superficial, such as the fashion of having trained slaves
14
to recite Platonic dialogues as entertainment at dinner-parties. But there was
genuine enthusiasm for Greek literature, philosophy and art. Greek intellectuals
such as Plutarch found a ready welcome in Flavian Rome. As for Latin litera-
ture of the age, the titles of Statius' Thebaid and Achilleid, or Valerius Flaccus'
Argonautica, speak for themselves. It is worth recalling that Quintilian, the
foremost teacher of his day, recommended that small boys - he was thinking, of
course, of the elite - should be taught Greek before Latin (which they would
pick up anyway), although not to the extent of 'speaking and learning only
Greek for a long time - as happens in very many cases'. This would have a bad
effect on the child's command of Latin. The common practice which Quintilian
thought excessive may well have applied to the boy Hadrian. 9
If the three-year-old Hadrian was at Rome, rather than at Ephesus or else-
where with his father in the summer of 79, the death of old Vespasian and the
accession of his elder son Titus might have been the earliest public event to be
imprinted in his memory. Vespasian was at Aquae Cutiliae, a Sabine spa, when
he succumbed - to a fever rather than to gout, Cassius Dio reports. In spite of
which, according to Dio 'there have been some who spread the story that Titus
had poisoned his father at a banquet.' One of these rumour-mongers, he adds,
was none other than the Emperor Hadrian. When Hadrian made the charge is
not stated and where Dio found out about it is not clear. One might assume
that Hadrian was quoted to this effect by Marius Maximus. Hadrian might even
have found occasion to refer to the story in his autobiography. But such a claim
by Hadrian might have gone the rounds in senatorial circles for years and years.
The boy Hadrian can hardly have heard the allegation in 79, but the odds are
that it surfaced under Domitian, who is credited with other smears against his
brother. The fact that Hadrian believed it and later repeated it is perhaps an
indirect sign of his attitude to Domitian. 1 0
A succession of striking events in Rome and Italy from 79 onwards must have
made some impact on a child at Rome. It is enough merely to list them. The
eruption of Vesuvius and the disappearance of Pompeii and Herculaneum in
August 79 is an obvious enough sensation. More immediate would be the fire
at Rome itself the following year, less disastrous and dramatic than the great fire
under Nero in GA, but serious enough to consume the rebuilt temple of Jupiter
on the Capitol destroyed in another blaze at the end of 69. Also very striking
- even for a child too young to attend - would be the opening of the vast new
Flavian amphitheatre (the 'Colosseum') by Titus in the summer of 80, with
a hundred days of spectacles. Titus' death the following September and the
accession of his much younger brother Domitian was another landmark. Not
much more than two years later Domitian would return from his brief partici-
pation in a northern war with the title 'Germanicus'. The eight-year-old
Hadrian probably watched the triumph early in 84. Whether he also registered
discussion of a famous Roman victory in the far north, won by Julius Agricola
against the Caledonians at the battle of the Graupian Mountain in September
83, can be guessed with rather less confidence. The great general returned to
15
Rome quietly the next year and withdrew to private life. All the same, Agricola
was granted the triumphal insignia, the only man so honoured under
Domitian.11
In the course of the year 85 or at the latest in January 86 came the death of
Hadrian's father. Guardians were appointed for the boy, as he had not yet
assumed the toga of manhood: his first cousin once removed, Trajan, by now in
his early thirties, and another man from Italica, P. Acilius Attianus, a Roman
knight, aged forty-five. Their principal task was to look after the inherited
property, but Trajan may perhaps have played the part of a substitute parent. He
was presumably by now married, his wife being Pompeia Plotina: she was also
of 'colonial' origin, from Nemausus (Nimes) in Narbonensis. Plotina was prob-
ably only a few years older than Hadrian, and her relationship with him was very
warm in later years. He would also become very fond of his second cousin
Matidia, she too being not many years older than himself. She was the daughter
of Trajan's sister Marciana, and was probably married in the early 80s, at the
age of about fourteen or fifteen, to a man called Mindius. She bore a daughter,
named after herself, and - after the loss of this husband by divorce or death
- was married again, to a senator called Vibius Sabinus, and had a second
daughter, Sabina, in about 86.12
By this time Hadrian will have had elementary teachers for several years.
In 87 or 88 he was old enough to move on to secondary education with a
grammaticus, either at a school (which Quintilian thought preferable) or with
a private teacher. The HA happens to mention in a subsequent vita that the
celebrated Q. Terentius Scaurus was 'Hadrian's grammaticus. This is often taken
to be a careless abbreviation of an original expression such as 'grammaticus in the
time of Hadrian', for Scaurus was indeed at the height of his fame when Hadrian
was emperor. Still, there is something to be said for the notion that he had
taught Hadrian himself. Scaurus' names suggest that he may have derived from
Nemausus, from the same family as D. Terentius Scaurianus, a contemporary of
Hadrian who would rise high under Trajan. One might even take this further.
Pompeia Plotina, herself from Nemausus, could have been instrumental in
securing Scaurus as a teacher for her husband's young ward. Scaurus was to
become known as the author of a lengthy work entitled Ars grammatica and
for other writings, including one on correct spelling, De orthographia, and a
commentary on Horace. The latter was not one of Hadrian's favourite authors.
On the contrary, he preferred writers from the second century BC, Ennius
among Latin poets, the Elder Cato and the historian Coelius Antipater among
prose authors. Quintilian urged that boys should not be let loose on the 'ancient
authors' like Cato too soon - their harsh and powerful style would have a
bad influence. Cicero was the ideal - but the mature Hadrian would prefer
old Cato.13
Whatever he was reading in these early years, he preferred Greek to Latin
literature. The HA and the Epitome de Caesaribus, both plainly deriving from
Marius Maximus, state that he was already 'rather strongly {impensius — which
16
might even mean 'too strongly') steeping himself in Graecis litteris or Graecis
studiis. 'Such was his inclination in this direction', both sources add, 'that quite
a few people used to call him '"little Greek".' The nickname Graeculus was
certainly a form of mild mockery, if not necesssarily conveying the venom
with which Juvenal would use the term a few decades later. Be this as it may,
the ten-year-old Hadrian might be supposed to have been impressed and
inspired by imperial patronage of Greek culture. Domitian instituted regular
festivals at his Alban villa, held almost every year, Suetonius says, at which
literary competitions for orators and poets were prominent. In 86 the Emperor
inaugurated something much more lavish, a triple contest in honour of Jupiter
Capitolinus, to be held every four years at Rome. A new stadium that could
hold 15,000 spectators was built for the purpose. Poets and musicians, athletes
both male and female, and horsemen, competed, with the Emperor presiding
in Greek dress. It was in fact a Greek agon, with Domitian as the agonothetes.
Another sign of imperial philhellenism was that Domitian even consented to
hold office - in absentia - as archon at Athens. 14
Domitian's new stadium was only a small part of the massive building
programme in which he was engaged throughout his reign - continuing, in
effect, what had been going on since reconstruction after the fire of 64 had
been launched by Nero. Vespasian and Titus had taken this much further, with
the vast new Forum of Peace, new Baths and temples, and, of course, the
Colosseum. There was much to restore after the fire of 80. Apart from other
projects, Domitian greatly enlarged and elaborated the imperial residence on the
Palatine. The building boom, that had lasted for over thirty years by the time
of Domitian's death, received a new impetus under Trajan, and Hadrian would
continue building on a massive scale as Emperor, in Rome and elsewhere.
Fortunes were made by some of the families with estates near Rome on which
bricks and tiles were manufactured, among them by the brothers Domitii. The
passion for architecture that Hadrian was to display as a young man no doubt
goes back to his boyhood - likewise his skills as a player of the cithara (psallendi)
and as a singer. Quintilian approved of old-fashioned singing - the praises of
famous men - and a knowledge of the principles of music. The psaltery, in his
view, was 'unsuitable even for a young girl of good character', never mind for a
boy. 15
Warfare continued during the 80s. After the early victory over the Chatti and
the triumph, there had been a serious debacle. The governor of Moesia, Oppius
Sabinus, was defeated and killed by the Dacians. Domitian took the field again,
repelled the invaders and celebrated another triumph, probably in 86. Two
Spanish senators won distinction in high command, Funisulanus Vettonianus,
from Caesaraugusta (Saragossa) and Cornelius Nigrinus from Liria. The Guard
Prefect Cornelius Fuscus was then entrusted with a Roman offensive across the
Danube. It ended in disaster, with Fuscus' death, and Domitian had to return
to the front. Reinforcements were needed there, including II Adiutrix, one of
the four legions in Britain - where most of Agricola's conquests were, as a result,
17
abandoned. Things went better in 88, when the general Tettius Julian us inflicted
a defeat on the Dacians. In the meantime there had been further festivities at
Rome, Saecular Games. The choice of the year 88 seems at first sight surprising.
The traditional Games were held at intervals of 110 years - Claudius' Games in
48 were different, celebrating the 800th anniversary of Rome's foundation.
Augustus' Games had been held in 17 BC, so that, at first sight, Domitian should
have waited until 94. Perhaps the quindecimviri, the priests responsible for these
matters (one of whom was Cornelius Tacitus, also praetor in the year 88),
reported that Augustus' celebration ought to have been held in 23 BC, which
gave the proper interval of 110 years before 88.16
At the start of the year 89 came a dramatic development. News reached
Rome that Antonius Saturninus, the commander of the Upper German army,
at Moguntiacum (Mainz), had staged a coup d'etat, supported by some, but
perhaps not all, of his four or five legions. It may be that Domitian had had
wind of Saturninus' plans in advance, and, for this reason, for the first time since
he had become Emperor, refrained from holding office as consul at the start of
89. At any rate, he presumably left for Germany within a very short time of
hearing the news, no doubt with the Praetorian Guard. There was the prospect
of civil war, almost an exact replay, twenty years on, of Vitellius' proclamation
on the Rhine. But, unlike Vitellius, Saturninus found no support from the other
army commanders. His counterpart in the northern Rhineland, Lappius
Maximus, moved against him with the Lower German army, likewise Norbanus,
the equestrian governor of Raetia, the province to the east, with his force of
auxiliaries. Other armies were also summoned. Trajan, at this time command-
ing the legion VII Gemina in north-west Spain, brought his men by forced
marches from Asturia to the Rhine, a good 700 miles (835 km). Lappius and
Norbanus had suppressed the revolt before even Domitian arrived, let alone
Trajan. A senatorial college of priests, the Arval Brethren, prayed on the Capitol
for Domitian's safety, victory and return on 12 January. They were already
celebrating the partial fulfilment of their vota ten days later; on the 25th they
sacrificed to mark 'public rejoicing' and on the 29th for Domitian's safety and
return - the victory had already been won.17
Saturninus had hoped for support from the Chatti, who evidently destroyed
some of the recently constructed forts east of the Rhine. A brief campaign
against them followed, and Domitian then moved down the Danube for a
further expedition, against the Suebi and the Dacians. It was not the first time
that there had been a conspiracy against Domitian — at least, in September 87
sacrifices had been performed by the Arval Brethren 'on account of the detec-
tion of criminal acts by the sacrilegious'. Reprisals certainly followed the failed
coup of 89; and there will have been uneasiness in parts of the Senate at the
least. A pretender appeared in the east, with Parthian backing, claiming to be
Nero. He was soon suppressed, but it was a disturbing episode. A proconsul of
Asia in office at about this time, Vettulenus Civica Cerialis, specifically included
by Suetonius among senior senators put to death by Domitian, was probably
18
implicated in some way in the conspiracy of 87, or somehow compromised by
the false Nero affair, rather than linked to the failed coup of Saturninus. 18
By November 89 Domitian was back at Rome, and again celebrated a triumph
- this time a double one, over Chatti and Dacians. As a further sign of the
glorification of the ruler, the months September and October were renamed,
respectively Germanicus - the name by which he preferred to be known since
his first northern victory - and Domitianus, the former to commemorate the
month of his accession, the latter the month when he was born. He began the
year 90 as consul. It was the fifteenth occasion he had held the office - he had
been consul six times under Vespasian, although only once as ordinarius, and
had shared the fasces with Titus in 80. From 82 onwards the only year in which
the Emperor had not been consul was 89. His colleague in 90 was M. Cocceius
Nerva, who had already been consul with Vespasian nearly twenty years earlier:
the distinction was striking, for Vespasian and Titus almost monopolised the
ordinary consulship throughout the 70s. Nerva must have been valuable to
Vespasian, as he had been to Nero - he had evidently given Nero useful advice
in the aftermath of the conspiracy of 65, and had been suitably decorated.
His role as an eminence grise under the Flavians can only be deduced from these
distinctions. Presumably his advice was particularly useful again in 89. There
was an unusually large number of suffect consuls in 90. Some of these might be
men who had just displayed conspicuous loyalty. One suffect was Ser. Julius
Servianus, his colleague being a man from Corduba, L. Antistius Rusticus.
Another Baetican senator, L. Cornelius Pusio, was one of the other suffects.
All must be supposed to have been loyal servants of Domitian. The odds are
that Servianus had already become Hadrian's brother-in-law by marrying his
sister Paulina. The daughter of this marriage, Julia Paulina, Hadrian's niece,
would herself marry in 106 and cannot have been born much later than 91 or
92. Servianus' origin is nowhere directly attested, but he was surely from the
colonial elite, rather than from Italy. Various considerations make southern Gaul
more likely as his home than Spain. 19
Some time after his next birthday, 24 January 90, Hadrian 'went back to
Italica.' The language of the HA has given rise to the idea that he had, after all,
been born there and not at Rome. Or, it is suggested, he had been taken to
Italica before, as a child, which is, to be sure, perfectly possible, whether on
a private visit with his parents, or, perhaps, if his father had been proconsul, or
legate to a proconsul, of the province Baetica. But rediit probably simply conveys
the sense that he 'went back to the old plantation.' Cassius Dio happens to
register a curious business at Rome in this year, an alleged bout of poisoning,
'some persons smearing needles with poison and pricking people with them',
resulting in many deaths - and punishment of the alleged perpetrators. It was
going on not only at Rome but 'in most of the world'. In fact, an epidemic was
probably raging. There were several deaths in high places, for example the
younger Aurelius Fulvus, consul ordinarius in 89, and probably aged only about
thirty-three, the wife and young sons of the Professor of Rhetoric Quintilian,
19
and the husband of the young and beautiful Violentilla. Martial congratulated
his friend Licinius Sura soon afterwards on his recovery from an almost fatal
illness. One might in fact suggest that Servianus married Domitia Paulina
precisely because he had been widowed - he was, after all, over forty and had
surely not been a bachelor up till then. 20
Hadrian might have been sent to Italica to escape the epidemic. A likelier
reason is that he had assumed the toga of manhood and was thus under some
obligation to inspect the family property at Italica and elsewhere in Baetica. The
ceremony was often held when the youth was a year or two older than fourteen.
But Nero had assumed the toga virilis at this age and the young Marcus Aurelius
would do likewise. The occasion was normally the festival of the Liberalia on 17
March. It may be supposed that in March of the year 90 Hadrian went through
this rite de passage. He was now no longer a puer but a iuvenis.21
20
2
THE OLD D O M I N I O N
Tarraconensis and Baetica were not quite Rome's oldest overseas possessions.
Sicily and Sardinia-Corsica, annexed after the First Punic War, had priority. But
Rome had first established a foothold in the peninsula at Tarraco (Tarragona) in
218 BC, at the very start of the Hannibalic War. Within twelve years, building
on the work of his father and uncle, P. Scipio, the later Africanus, had conquered
Carthage's Spanish empire and a good deal more. It would be a hard struggle to
take Roman rule as far as the Atlantic. The Cantabrians and Asturians of the
north-west did not succumb until 19 BC, and for several decades Augustus
retained a force of three legions in Tarraconensis, the largest of the three
provinces into which the land was now divided. By the time of Nero the garrison
was reduced to a single legion and that remained the case thereafter. VII
Gemina, based on the new legion raised by Galba in Spain in 68, had now taken
over the fortress in Asturia which was to be called Legio (Leon). The other two
provinces, Lusitania and Baetica, had no legions and scarcely any garrison; and
their governors were of lower rank than the consular legate who ruled Hither
Spain from Tarraco. Lusitania, the western part of the old Further Spain, was,
like Tarraconensis, an imperial province, governed by the emperor's legate, but
only by an ex-praetor, being thus on a par with with the three Gallic provinces,
Aquitania, Belgica and Lugdunensis. Baetica, which took its name from the
Baetis (the modern name, Guadalquivir, means precisely 'the great river', as the
Arab conquerors called it in the eighth century), was a 'senatorial' or proconsular
province. 1
The proconsular provinces were fundamentally, as the geographer Strabo
had expressed it in Augustus' day, those that were 'peaceable and easy to rule
without arms'. Furthermore, it might be added that the proconsular provinces
were those that were highly urbanised. This certainly applied to Baetica, where
the old Punic and Carthaginian cities such as Gades (Cadiz) and Malaca
(Malaga) had been joined by a host of Roman foundations. Italica was the first
in a long line. Carteia, another veteran settlement, had received a charter from
the Senate in 171 BC. Meanwhile the riches of the country had attracted settlers
and contractors in substantial numbers. Other and more famous city foundations
followed, above all Corduba (Cordoba) and Hispalis (Sevilla). Caesar and
21
THE OLD DOMINION
Augustus conferred charters on existing towns - including Italica - and
established further coloniae in Baetica. Vespasian's grant of Latin status to the
whole peninsula meant that every community that had hitherto lacked a charter
could now convert itself into a municipium?
The wealth of Spain, and especially the valley of the Baetis, is underlined by
the description in Strabo's Geography^ under Augustus. 'Turdetania, as he calls
the region, was 'wonderfully blessed by nature: not only does it produce
everything, but these blessings are doubled by the ease with which its products
can be exported by ship.' He lists 'corn and wine and olive oil - not only in large
quantities but of the best quality - wax, honey and pitch' among these products,
as well as dye-stuffs, wool, cattle of all kinds, game, and seafood in abundance.
Over and above this Strabo stresses Turdetania's richness in metals: gold, silver,
copper and iron were all there, in a quantity and quality unsurpassed anywhere
in the world. His story that the Carthaginians had found the people of
that country using silver feeding-troughs and wine-jars may be only a slight
exaggeration. 3
The favoured land had not surprisingly attracted substantial numbers of
immigrants over the last century and a half of the Republic, civilian traders and
contractors, even political exiles, to add to the Italian element represented
by veterans. The nomenclature of Roman Spain indicates that many of the
immigrants came from the back country in Italy, from Etruria, Umbria,
Picenum and Samnium. What the total number of settlers was can only be
guessed at, but in the Civil War some ten thousand men from immigrant or
veteran families served in the Pompeian forces. Relations with the native
Iberians were mostly friendly and intermarriage was common. It is true that
the author of the Bellum Hispaniense, describing Caesar's campaign against the
younger Pompey in 45 BC, while noting that 'the whole of Further Spain is
fertile and well-watered', adds that 'because of frequent native raids, all places
remote from towns are protected by towers and fortifications, with lookout
points'. The implantation of colonists by Caesar and Augustus and the estab-
lishment of peace throughout the empire ended this residual insecurity. And
the new settlement took place, at least in Baetica and eastern Tarraconensis,
in a country already to a large extent Latin in language and culture. 'The
Turdetanians', Strabo wrote, 'have completely changed over to the Roman way
of life, and do not even remember their own language any more.' Large-scale
grants of Latin status and the admission of natives to colonial foundations under
Caesar and Augustus helped to consolidate the process. 4
Southern Spain early on began to make its own contribution to Latin
literature. Cicero in 62 BC made a sarcastic comment about Corduban poets,
unnamed, with their 'heavy and slightly foreign sound'. In spite of this, under
Augustus Corduba produced another one, Sextilius Ena, whose verses praised
Cicero. Better known is the celebrated rhetor and prose author Annaeus Seneca.
His son of the same name would become even more famous, as a poet and
philosopher and as tutor and minister to Nero; and the rhetors grandson was the
22
THE OLD DOMINION
epic poet Lucan. Other Baetican litterati include the elder Seneca's friend Porcius
Latro and, probably, Junius Gallio, who was to adopt Seneca's eldest son. Both
acquired a reputation as declaimers at Rome. Some of the Spanish orators of the
time, for example Gavius Silo and Clodius Turrinus, remained in the province.
Several other Augustan writers may also have derived from Spain, such as the
historian Fenestella, the collector of moral exempla Valerius Maximus, and
Grattius, who produced a poem on hunting, the Cynegetica, The attraction of
Rome for provincial talents was too strong for most to resist. These three,
like the Senecas, Gallio and Latro, had clearly all moved to Rome. Flavian
Rome had two outstanding Spaniards - both, from their names, of Romanised
Iberian origin and both from Tarraconensis: Quintilian the teacher of rhetoric
(M. Fabius Quintilian us) from Calagurris (Calahorra) and the poet Martial (M.
Valerius Martialis) from Bilbilis (near Calatayud). 5
The HA has only a single sentence about Hadrian's brief stay at Italica.
'He at once entered military service', it begins. Militia for a fourteen-year-old
cannot possibly mean joining the army. Hadrian must have been enrolled in the
local organisation, collegium, for the young men of good family, the iuvenes.
Inscriptions attest the existence of such collegia in the towns of Italy and the
western provinces. Not much is known of what they actually did. At the still
native town of Mactaris (Maktar) in Africa the iuvenes, sixty-five strong,
dedicated a basilica and storehouses in the year 88. The basilica was no doubt a
training-hall. The young men probably had a role in the imperial cult and
undertook physical, perhaps military training. In case of extreme emergency
they could be called up as a militia. But the few mentions in literary sources
suggest that in some cases the gilded municipal youth got out of hand. In
Apuleius' novel, The Golden Ass, the beautiful Photis warns her lover Lucius to
return to his lodgings in good time: 'There is a wild band of iuvenes of good
family that disturbs the peace - you will see the bodies of people they have killed
lying in the street.' That this unruly conduct by the iuvenes was not entirely
fictional is clear from the third-century jurist Callistratus: 'Some of those com-
monly called iuvenes have the habit of joining in popular acclamations in some
disorderly communities. If they have not caused any further trouble and have
not been warned by the governor, they can be punished by a beating and banned
from attending shows.' Further offences were to receive more serious treatment,
exile or even death. 6
What else Hadrian did in his short stay in the old country is largely a matter
of guesswork. He may have had relatives there, for example a great-uncle, also
called Aelius Hadrianus. According to the HA, the old man, an expert astrologer,
once told the young Hadrian that he would become emperor. Although Hadrian
was later noted for his addiction to the science of the stars, the story may be an
invention of the HA. If, as seems likely, his mother was with him, they may have
visited her home town, Gades. A visit to the proconsul may also have been
deemed appropriate for a young man of senatorial family. It is not known who
the incumbent governor was in the year 90 - it could have been one Baebius
23
THE OLD DOMINION
Massa, whose conduct was to result in his prosecution three years later. But
Massa probably held office in 9 1 - 2 or 9 2 - 3 . However this may be, the young
master should at least have inspected the family estates, a few miles upstream
from Italica, on the way to Ilipa, to make himself known to the estate-workers.
Amphorae made to contain olive-oil from this locality, produced by the
'Virginensian Pottery' (figlina Virginensia), were stamped port. P.A.H., plausibly
interpreted as 'the warehouse, port(us), of Publius Aelius Hadrianus'. One estate
then was presumably the fundus Virginiensis recorded by a painted inscription
from the great mound of amphorae at Rome, the Monte Testaccio. The names
of five slave-workers appear on some of these amphorae: Augustalis, Callistus,
Hermes, Milo and Romulus. Whether any of these men were already working
on the estate when the young Hadrian was there is another matter. The
amphorae are generally dated a little later.7
What impression Italica made on Hadrian can only be surmised - the fact
that he studiously avoided returning there when he was in Spain as emperor may
imply that his verdict was somewhat negative. This implication is not necessarily
in conflict with his lavish generosity to the place, which was totally transformed
during his reign. Small-town life and society may have seemed boring and petty.
When Martial returned to his Spanish home a decade later, he admitted to his
friend Priscus that he was living 'in a provincial desert': it was difficult to keep
one's spirits up every day in a small place, without theatres, libraries and dinner
parties, and subjected to the envy or malice of his fellow-muncipales. One
'cultural' item may have caught Hadrian's attention at Italica, a Greek work
of art which must have been one of the town's treasures. A small marble plaque
registered the fact that it had been donated 'to the vicus Italicensis by Lucius
Mummius, son of Lucius, imp(erator)\ following the 'capture of Corinth'. The
consul who destroyed Corinth in 146 BC and took the name 'Achaicus' had
previously served as governor of Further Spain. Little Italica had thus been
singled out for a small share in the spoils - Mummius' vast plunder of statues
and paintings was notorious. He had given them away with astonishing
lavishness, lacking any personal interest in the arts. Hadrian may have made
friends at Italica. A possible fellow-townsman and probably his exact coeval,
later registered as one of his closest friends, was A. Platorius Nepos. But Hadrian
and Nepos could have got to know each other at Rome or at Tibur - Aemilius
Papus, also known as Messius Rusticus, another of Hadrian's close friends,
whose family came from Siarum in the Baetis valley, certainly had property at
Tibur. 8
The rest of the HAs report on Hadrian's stay at Italica, following immediately
on his entry into the 'militia', is much more readily intelligible: he was 'devoted
to hunting, to such an extent as to incur reprimand'. This was no doubt a
favourite activity of the iuvenes of Italica. Spain was an ideal country for such
pursuits: stags, wild boar and wild goats abounded - as did the 'digging hares'
(rabbits) then found only there in Europe. It is no coincidence that the book of
epigrams composed by Martial at Bilbilis begins by saying that 'after the
24
THE OLD DOMINION
hunting-nets have been put aside and the wood is silent', he could compose -
there was nothing else to do there. It may be inferred that Hadrian was still at
Italica in the autumn, when the hunting season began. He may have formed
another habit here. Marius Maximus reported that Hadrian's favourite dish was
a game pie, the ingredients being sow's udder, pheasant and ham, baked in pastry.
Hadrian — who always had a healthy appetite — called it his tetrafarmacum, 'four-
fold medicine'. The name was probably meant as a joke, a reference to the use
of the originally medical term by the Epicurean philosophers, to describe the
essence of the master's doctrines. It is plausible enough that Hadrian acquired
the taste for this dish in his youth and first ate it after hunting at Italica. The
sport was not yet, however, an acceptable or highly thought-of occupation for
upper-class Romans, as it had always been for the Greeks. Polybius specifically
mentions how exceptional was the younger Scipio in his devotion to hunting
- which he acquired in Macedonia after his father Paullus' conquest of that king-
dom - and to other Hellenic arts and sciences. Scipio Aemilianus remained
an exception: the Roman elite left hunting to slaves and freedmen - or, in the
shape of staged venationes in the arena, hunting was a spectacle to entertain
the people. 9
This would soon change, with the advent of Trajan. A decade later Pliny was
to wax rapturous at the new ruler's healthy and honourable forms of recreation,
hunting and sailing. Whenever he could find time, his 'only relaxation is to
range through the forests and drive the wild beasts from their lairs'. Senators
such as Pliny and Tacitus followed suit, half-heartedly in Pliny's case: he took
his notebooks with him, as he 'sat by the hunting-nets, with writing materials
instead of hunting spears', a practice he recommended to Tacitus. In Spain it
had no doubt been different. The rebel general Sertorius, who controlled much
of the peninsula for a decade or so in the late Republic, 'hunted whenever he
had leisure', according to Plutarch. The Spanish rhetor Porcius Latro, for all that
he was notoriously pale from his hours of studying indoors, had at one time
been devoted to hunting in forest and mountain with the peasants with such a
passion that he could hardly tear himself away from the chase. The younger
Seneca, who seldom even hints at his Spanish origin, seems also to have hunted,
for he writes of the 'effort and danger' involved 'when we hunt'. Poems of
Martial also show a few of his Spanish friends enjoying the chase. But Trajan,
even if he shared the Spanish taste, was not yet emperor in the year 90. His
reaction when he heard of Hadrian's excessive enthusiasm was 'to remove him'
from Italica. 10
Trajan himself was due to return to Rome by the autumn of 90 at the latest,
to be consul ordinarius for the next year. One might suppose that he travelled
from Legio to Italica and personally yanked his young ward away - the word
used, abductus, is certainly rather strong. He might even have summoned him
up to the legionary base. Be this as it may, and whether or not Hadrian had the
chance to see other parts of Spain on the return journey, it may be supposed
that before the end of the year 90 he was back at Rome, where he was treated
25
THE OLD DOMINION
by Trajan 'as a son' {profilio).Trajan was now at the pinnacle of distinction. As
consul ordinarius, with, as his colleague, M \ Acilius Glabrio, a member of whose
family had first held the office nearly three hundred years before (in 191 BC),
his social rank was now second to none except the Emperor, not least because
so few non-members of the imperial family had been allowed to hold the
ordinary consulship under the Flavians.11
Hadrian had probably had at least one private tutor in his household at
Italica. Back at Rome he was ready to attend classes in rhetoric. It was probably
too late for him to become a pupil of the foremost teacher of the day, Quintilian.
He retired at about this time, after twenty years as 'Imperial Professor' at Rome
- he was the first holder of the Chair in Rhetoric created by Vespasian - and
was devoting himself to writing a lengthy monograph, On the Education of an
Orator}1
26
3
MILITARY TRIBUNE
If Hadrian could not attend classes with Quintilian, he was no doubt found
another teacher. He would in any case have been expected, as a senator's son
himself and hence a future senator, to attach himself to leading orators. One rising
star was not available: Cornelius Tacitus was away in the years 9 0 - 3 , presumably
holding posts in the provinces. It is probable enough that Trajan encouraged
Hadrian to sit at the feet of Licinius Sura, another Spaniard, from one of the
coloniae in Tarraconensis. Sura had already been winning applause as an advocate
in the early 80s, when Martial wrote his first book of epigrams. In 92 Martial
would call him 'most celebrated of learned men, whose old-fashioned speech
recalls that of our grave forefathers'. He had a house on the Aventine, close to
the Temple of Diana and overlooking the Circus Maximus, as Martial reveals in
another poem. Sura is named third in a short list of eloquent admirers of Martial's
writings, after Silius Italicus, the consular poet, and Aquillius Regulus, an
aggressive orator. 1
Early in May 92 Domitian left Rome for yet another northern campaign,
against the Suebian Germans and the Sarmatians, and would be away for eight
months. It may be that Trajan went with him and remained on the Danube,
perhaps even to become governor of Pannonia. A few years later, at any rate,
Pliny claimed that after winning approval for his rapid march from Spain to the
Rhine in 89, Trajan was 'deemed worthy' by Domitian 'to conduct a series of
expeditions': it is hard to see where else he could have served. The Emperor's
campaign was far from a complete success, not least since a legion, XXI Rapax,
was wiped out by the enemy. When Domitian returned in January 93, he
marked the end of the war merely with a minor triumph, an ovatio. Statius
attributed the Emperor's self-restraint to his 'clemency', and to his not wishing
to 'dignify' the Marcomanni and the Sarmatian 'nomads' by holding a full-scale
triumph over them. In December 92, anticipating Domitian's imminent return,
Martial had addressed his eighth book of Epigrams to the Emperor, calling him
by the title 'Dacicus' (which Domitian never assumed). A dozen of the eighty-
two poems are devoted to praise, direct or indirect, of Domitian: 'In the month
of Janus, the city sees a god returning'; 'Rome never loved a leader (ducem) so
much'; 'It is not because of your gifts that the people loves you, Caesar, the
people loves your gifts because of you.' 2
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Martial's ninth book, a year or two later, likewise continued to hail Domitian's
victories. A new theme was added: the Emperor had banned castration, for
which Martial congratulates him effusively in two poems. The poet managed,
nonetheless, to include in the same book six effusive pieces on Domitian's own
eunuch favourite Earinus, who had just dedicated some locks of his hair in a
golden box to be deposited in the shrine of Asclepius at his native Pergamum.
Statius, meanwhile, produced over a hundred lines on the beautiful Earinus and
the tresses that the god was receive from the Caesareus puer, artfully praising the
imperial ban on castration at the same time. The Emperor's 'Ganymede' was no
exception in Flavian Rome. Beautiful boys - albeit mostly not eunuchs - were
a feature of several households known from the literature of the age. Two poems
of Statius were written to console friends on the deaths of delicati. 'Greek love'
had once been frowned upon at Rome, and the traditionally minded professor,
Quintilian, still disapproved. Martial's and Statius' writings show that it was now
commonplace. 3
In the course of 93 there was news from Baetica to create a stir, of special
interest to senators from the province, no doubt. The proconsul, Baebius Massa,
was accused by 'the provincials' - presumably through the provincial council -
of extortion or corruption. Massa was tried before his peers, in the Senate, the
prosecutors being Herennius Senecio, a senator from Baetica itself, and Pliny.
Massa was convicted and his assets frozen while restitution was assessed. In the
meantime the former proconsul struck back. He had experience as a delator (an
informer or denouncer specialising in accusations of maiestas, treason) from the
time of Nero. Together with Mettius Car us, another delator, he accused Senecio
of treason. This would open the floodgates. Senecio was an adherent of the Stoic
philosophy and closely linked with a senatorial group commonly labelled the
'Stoic Opposition'. A series of treason trials in the Senate followed, resulting in
the execution not merely of Senecio but of two ex-consuls, Helvidius Priscus and
Arulenus Rusticus, and the banishment of four other persons of senatorial rank,
Rusticus' brother Mauricus, together with Mauricus' wife, and two women from
the family of Helvidius. The charges were various, but clearly involved, in
essence, criticism of the Emperor, direct or indirect, by a group that had dis-
played opposition to autocracy for half a century - Helvidius' father, had been
condemned to death by Vespasian, his father's father-in-law Thrasea by Nero,
Thrasea's father-in-law Caecina Paetus by Claudius. 4
The trials took place after the death of Julius Agricola, who died on 23 August
93, while the prosecution of Baebius Massa was still in progress. Tacitus wrote,
a few years later, that Agricola was fortunate in dying when he did, not having
to witness 'the Senate House under siege, the Senate shut in by armed men.' The
young Hadrian must have watched these trials - and, of course, that of Baebius
Massa - with considerable interest. The consuls would have been required to
preside; one of the men holding office in 93 was evidently a Spanish kinsman
of Hadrian's family, L. Dasumius Hadrian us of Corduba. As for Tacitus, he was
back at Rome soon after Agricola's death - he had been away for four years
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- and, with his fellow-senators, was obliged to vote for the death sentence
against Helvidius, Rusticus and Senecio. Tacitus had mixed feelings. Part of the
charge against Senecio was that he had declined to stand for office after entering
the Senate with the most junior magistracy, the quaestorship. What good did
this passive opposition do? Agricola acted differently: he had continued to serve
his country, even under Domitian - and would have been only too ready to
make himself available for further service, in Syria, on the Danube, as proconsul
of Asia, had Domitian permitted. Tacitus concluded, a few years later, that 'those
who admire what is unlawful ought to know that there can be great men even
under bad emperors, that obedience and restraint, if combined with diligence
and vigour, are more laudable than seeking fame by the precipitous path that
leads to an ostentatious martyrdom, which brings no benefit to the common-
wealth.' 5
Agricolas path, obedience and moderation, was, after all, the path that Trajan
was following. As Trajan was later said to have remarked: 'Domitian was a bad
emperor, but he had good amicu There can be little doubt that Hadrian would
have been content to subscribe to this view and, indeed, may even have felt that
Domitians measures against the Stoic group were justified. It is quite possible
that he was present as an observer in the Senate House when the trials were
in progress: Augustus had permitted sons of senators to attend Senate meetings
as soon as they had taken the toga virilis, 'to accustom themselves to public life'.
At all events, the treason trials could still have been in progress when Hadrian
took his first steps in his official career. It was presumably in 94 that he held
one of the offices in the vigintivirate, which Augustus had made obligatory for
future senators. There were four separate boards, of varying prestige. Patricians,
or plebeians with exceptionally strong patronage behind them, could become
one of the three mint-masters, tresviri monetales. Then there were the four men
assigned to supervise the streets of the capital, the quattuorviri viarum
curandarum. Least favoured were the members of the board of three whose
duties included some forms of policing, the tresviri capitales - at this very time
they had been called upon to supervise the public burning of books by the
condemned senators. Hadrian's friend Platorius Nepos, who had to be content
with being a capitalis and must have served at about this time, could have been
given this disagreeable task. 6
Hadrian's post was as one of the remaining ten vigintiviri, the decemviri
stlitibus iudicandis (the board of ten to adjudicate lawsuits), assigned by the
responsible praetor to preside over one of the four panels of jurors in the
Centumviral Court. This dealt with civil cases and met in the Basilica Julia. The
public could and did attend. It was, however, the speeches of the advocates
which attracted their attention, not the performance of the presiding decemvir,
who is scarcely ever mentioned: his duties were clearly minimal. Pliny, who had
himself appeared before the Centumviri as an advocate at the age of eighteen,
and had been a decemvir shortly afterwards, continued to be regularly involved
with cases in this court. He happens to record one which fell about the time
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when the young Hadrian might have been presiding. One Asudius Curianus had
been disinherited by his mother, who made Pliny and another senator, Sertorius
Severus, as well as several knights, her new heirs. Some of them were nervous
that their friendship with the recently executed Arulenus Rusticus might
jeopardise their position. Pliny made Curianus an offer just before the case was
due to open, and it was settled out of court. 7
Being a decemvir was not very demanding, it may be supposed, but it was an
initiation into public life, a magistracy of the Roman People, if only a minor
one. Hadrian would have had attendants (viatores) and scribes assigned to him.
The same year would also bring two further opportunities to play a public role.
By fortunate chance, the base survives for a statue set up to him at Athens in
the year 112. It lists his cursus honorum, confirming and supplementing the
account given in the HA. Two posts not mentioned in the vita are registered
after the decemvirate: praefectus feriarum Latinarum and sevir turmae equitum
Romanorum. The feriae Latinae were an ancient festival of the old Latin League,
still held every year in the spring or early summer on the Alban mountain
(modern Monte Cavi in the Alban Hills) twenty miles south of Rome. All the
magistrates of the Roman People were obliged to attend and in their absence
the consuls had to appoint a prefect to look after their duties in the city. The
position seems regularly to have been given to a young senator or future senator,
who had caught the eye of one of the consuls. It seems probable that Hadrian
was picked out by the suffect consuls in office from 1 May to the end of August
in 94, both of them men with a string of names, M. Lollius Paullinus D.
Valerius Asiaticus Saturninus and C. Antius A. Julius Quadratus. The former
was a descendant of the Gallic senator, Valerius Asiaticus of Vienna (Vienne),
who had been consul for the second time in 46 and was soon afterwards killed
by Claudius. Quadratus was from Pergamum and was one of the handful of
Greeks who had been made senators by Vespasian. He had in all probability
been legate to Trajan's father when the latter was proconsul of Asia fifteen years
earlier, and he was certainly a friend of Trajan himself. It seems highly plausible
that it was Quadratus who selected his friend's young kinsman for the honour
of replacing the consuls. 8
A month or two later came another ceremony, the annual ride-past of the
Roman knights [transvectio equitum) on 15 July. They were distributed for the
purpose in six squadrons {turmae), each of which was led by a young senator or
future senator, with the title sevir, who would, at the very least, have to be a
good horseman. Hadrian's sevirate at the ride-past is not dated on the Athens
inscription, of course, but, like the honorary prefecture of Rome, it too probably
fell in 94. The eighteen-year-old had now been very decisively launched on his
career. Whether he had attracted the notice of the Emperor and had been
favoured with an invitation to the Palace remains unknown. Statius celebrated
his own attendance, for the first time, at a mass imperial banquet for senators
and knights in this year or early in 95 - the 'Romulean chiefs' (senators) and
the 'wearers of the trabed (knights) reclined at a thousand tables - so it is not
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impossible that Hadrian was there. Statius expresses himself as awestruck by
the vast marbled halls and the chance to 'gaze on Himself, calm-visaged and
majestically serene'. 9
Suetonius, writing over thirty years later, not surprisingly has a different
emphasis. After the executions of senators Domitian 'became terrifying to all
and hated', and was increasingly nervous, having the portico in the Palace
where he took his exercise lined with reflecting walls so that he could see any-
one coming up behind him. As for his banquets, Cassius Dio tells of a macabre
entertainment for senators and knights, in a room entirely pitch black, with bare
couches of the same colour on the bare floor. The guests were invited at night
and a slab shaped like a gravestone was set beside them, black-painted boys
danced around them before the food, again all coloured black, was served. No
one spoke, except the host, 'and he conversed only about death and killing.' The
guests were petrified. 10
The year 95 was marked by further executions for conspiracy, prominent
victims being Acilius Glabrio, Trajan's aristocratic consular colleague, and
Domitian's own close kinsman, his cousin's son, Flavius Clemens. Clemens was
also married to Domitian's grand-niece Domitilla, two of his sons had been
adopted by Domitian and Clemens was consul this very year. Perhaps there were
grounds for Domitian's action. W h o can tell? He himself is reported by
Suetonius to have complained at the unhappy lot of principesr. no one believed
in conspiracies against emperors - except when they were actually killed.
Hadrian was probably glad to get away from Rome that year.11
Military service as a tribune was evidently no longer obligatory for future
senators - some, at any rate, are known to have omitted it. But, of the twenty-
eight legions that existed at this time, only the two in Egypt, from which persons
of senatorial rank were debarred, did not need a tribunus laticlavius, 'with the
broad stripe', denoting membership of the senatorial order. Some served for a
few months or a year only, but, as there were only twenty vigintiviri each
year, many of them must have joined a legion soon after their year as a minor
magistrate was over. In Hadrian's case there can have been no doubts: his father's
cousin, himself childless, who was now treating him 'like his own son', had spent
several years as a military tribune, in at least two separate legions, in Syria and
on the Rhine. H e would surely have insisted that Hadrian follow his example
and, furthermore, he was probably in a position to offer him a commission in
his own army. Although there is not yet positive evidence, rational conjecture
suggests that Trajan may have been governing Pannonia during these years. At
all events, Hadrian now became tribune of II Adiutrix, stationed at Aquincum
(Budapest) on the Danube. It was one of at least four legions in Pannonia and
had a key role to play in guarding the empire against the Sarmatians across the
12
river.1
II Adiutrix was a relatively new legion, only formed in the course of the Civil
Wars, from marines in the Ravenna fleet. It had soon afterwards been sent to
Britain and had had fifteen years of unbroken campaigning there, until it was
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transferred in 86 to the Danube, initially to Moesia. Three years later, after the
end of Domitian's first Pannonian campaign, it moved to Aquincum and built
itself the first legionary fortress there, of timber. It had certainly just participated
in Domitian's second Pannonian campaign, of 92, not long before Hadrian
took up his commission. As tribunus laticlavius Hadrian was, according to the
hierarchy, second-in-command to the legion's commander, the legate (whose
identity is unknown). He would have accommodation within the fortress on
a substantial scale, his own house, in fact, with a good many rooms, and he
would have brought with him slaves and freedmen from his own household in
Rome. 13
What his duties were is not so easy to say. Although in theory deputy
commander, in practice he would have been expected to learn from the profes-
sional officers, the centurions, mostly men risen from the ranks, and from his
five fellow-tribunes, all Roman knights. The centurions and men of the legion
would have had plenty to tell him, about campaigning against the Sarmatians,
and about their time in Britain during Agricola's long command. Some of them
would have been at the great battle of the Graupian Mountain in 83, and could
have offered opinions on the Caledonians. Hadrian, one likes to assume, will
not have been one of those who 'devoted his service to the pursuit of pleasure,
with as much leave as possible, to bring back the title of the tribunate, with
nothing learned.' Rather, like the young Agricola thirty-five years earlier, he will
have set out 'to get to know the province, to make himself known to the army,
to learn from the experienced, to follow the best, to strive after nothing for the
sake of ostentation, to refuse nothing through fear, to be at once cautious and
alert.' Like Agricola, he probably spent some time with the governor, whose
headquarters was at Carnuntum - not least if his kinsman Trajan was holding
the post. 14
Hadrian would later be known for his ability to mix easily with persons
from all walks of life and for his fondness for talking to plebeians; for his
astonishing capacity to remember names, not least of soldiers and veterans; and
for his readiness to share the soldiers' simple diet. These qualities probably
stood him in good stead in his first military posting. Later, as Emperor, he had
the reputation of being 'most skilled with weapons and most expert in military
science'. The odds are that he laid the groundwork for this proficiency at
Aquincum in the years 9 5 - 6 . At least one contact that he surely made in
95 was to be of great importance. An inscription from Aquincum registers a
centurion of II Adiutrix called M. Turbo. The name Turbo is so uncommon
that this can hardly be other than Q. Marcius Turbo (Marcius being abbre-
viated by analogy with the praenomen Marcus). This man from the Dalmatian
colonia Epidaurum (near Dubrovnik) would serve Hadrian as Guard Prefect for
over fifteen years. 15
After not much more than a year with II Adiutrix, Hadrian's tour of duty
came to an end, in the summer of 96 - perhaps because a new tribunus
laticlavius had come to take his place, which in turn might mean that a new
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governor had arrived, bringing his own protege as tribune with him. Be that as
it may, Hadrian did not part company with the army, but received a new
commission in one of the legions of Lower Moesia, V Macedonica, based at
Oescus at the confluence of the river of the same name with the Danube. The
governor to whom he owed this appointment cannot be identified with com-
plete certainty, but was very probably L. Julius Marinus. He is surely the Julius
Mar[ ], recorded as legate of Lower Moesia the following January. Marinus had
an estate at the Sabine town of Cures, but may well have come from the east
- the colonia of Berytus (Beirut) in Syria has been suggested as his home. At any
rate, the young Hadrian was probably known to him, or strongly recommended:
a second military tribunate was exceptional for a laticlavius}^
O n 18 September 96, not long after Hadrian had arrived at Oescus, a
dramatic event took place at Rome. The news probably took no more than
a week to reach the Lower Danube: the Emperor had been assassinated. His
successor - not the conspirators' first choice - was already installed and recog-
nised by the Senate, indeed, had been acclaimed by that body with enthusiasm:
Marcus Cocceius Nerva. Domitian's memory was condemned, his statues in
silver and gold were melted down, his name was erased from public monuments.
The plebs at Rome reached with indifference, but the soldiers were not at all
pleased. Some tried to have Domitian deified, so Suetonius reports. Elements of
the Danubian army, probably in Hadrian's province, were mutinous. They were
brought to their senses — according to an admittedly somewhat implausible story
in Philostratus - by the wandering philosopher Dio of Prusa (Bursa). Hadrian
had probably only been with V Macedonica for a few weeks when the news
came through - this appointment is dated to 'the very end of Domitian's reign'
(extremis iam Domitiani temporibus) by the HA.17
Domitian had been the victim of a palace conspiracy, within his own house-
hold, including his chamberlain and other palace freedmen, and the Empress,
not a plot by senators, let alone army-commanders, although the Guard Prefects
were involved. But his relations with the Senate had been steadily deteriorating
since 89, if not earlier, and the trials and executions in late 93 had made things
worse. Now libertas was proclaimed, the exiles returned, and there was a rush to
settle scores against those who had served the 'tyrant' as delatores. But the new
Emperor's position was far from secure. Nerva was anything but a military man
and the soldiers were angry. Further, the state finances were soon in a parlous
condition. Nerva was obliged to sell off imperial property to raise funds; and he
established an economy commission. He was to hold the consulship himself for
97, as was to be expected. The name of his colleague, however, may have come
as a surprise. It was L. Verginius Rufus, who had a played a significant role in
the Civil Wars of 6 8 - 9 , and had then prudently withdrawn from public life.
Rufus was now eighty-three years old. The reason for the choice may be divined.
Nearly thirty years earlier Rufus had been offered the throne by the soldiers,
more than once - first after the battle of Vesontio (Besancon) in June 68, after
his Upper German army had thrashed the Gallic rebels of Julius Vindex; the
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offer was repeated shortly afterwards, on the news of Nero s death, then again
after the death of Otho in April 69. Rufus had declined each time. Nerva may
have wanted to send a signal to the army commanders: they should follow this
salutary example.18
34
4
PRINCIPATUS ET LIBERTAS
The year 97 began inauspiciously. Old Verginius Rufus, rehearsing his address
of thanks to Nerva for the grant of the consulship, fell and broke his hip as he
bent to pick up a heavy book. A long illness followed. Meanwhile Nerva was
calling on other elderly men. His friend Arrius Antoninus, who had offered
Nerva his commiserations rather than congratulations on his accession, was
given a second consulship. His first had been in the Year of the Four Emperors,
AD 69. Julius Frontinus, who had been governor of Britain under Vespasian,
emerged to be curator of Rome's aqueducts. Corellius Rufus, nearly eighty years
old and crippled by painful gout for over forty years, was appointed to a land
commission. Frontinus, Corellius and Verginius were all friends and patrons
of Pliny. He himself had been one of the prefects of the military treasury in
Domitian's last years. Now, temporarily out of office, he reflected that 'once
Domitian had been killed, there was a beautiful opportunity for attacking the
guilty, avenging the victims - and promoting my own prospects.' Early in 97,
after consulting Corellius, he launched an attack on Publicius Certus, one of the
men in charge of the other treasury, the Aerarium Saturni. Certus had played
a major role in the downfall of Helvidius.1
Pliny's attack on Certus caused a general outcry. There were too many in the
Senate who had compromised themselves under Domitian. Pliny was taken
aside and warned that Certus had a powerful friend, 'then commanding a large
army in the east, about whom serious if unconfirmed rumours were circulating.'
But Pliny's main speech won the House round. When the aged Fabricius
Veiento, one of Domitian's long-serving advisers, tried to reply, he could not get
a hearing. Certus was not prosecuted, but was removed from his Treasury post
and denied the expected consulship.
Pliny's reference to the threatening posture of the unnamed army commander
in the east reflects the tense situation in which Nerva found himself. He
desperately needed the support of the armies. The danger in the east must
mean the army of Syria, and its commander had clearly made people wonder
if he would try a coup d'etat. He can be identified as M. Cornelius Nigrinus,
from Liria in eastern Tarraconensis, highly decorated by Domitian for service
on the Danube. Nerva acted quickly. Nigrinus was dismissed. A young senator
35
serving as quaestor in Asia, Larcius Priscus, was appointed, anomalously,
commander of the Syrian legion IV Scythica and acting governor of the
province; the legate of one of the other Syrian legions, XVI Flavia, was also
replaced hurriedly. Nigrinus evidently gave no trouble, retiring to his Spanish
home. The German armies also required loyal commanders. The governor of the
Upper province, with headquarters at Moguntiacum (Mainz), had probably
been appointed soon after Nerva's accession: M. Ulpius Traianus. Pliny would
soon embroider the circumstances, recalling a propitious omen. As Trajan
mounted the Capitol to sacrifice, as was usual, before leaving for his command,
'some citizens, gathered there for other reasons', suddenly cried out 'Imperator!'
- so Pliny would claim, some four years later. 'It was thought at the time that
they were saluting Jupiter.' 2
In the course of the summer Verginius Rufus finally expired. The public
funeral was a great occasion, 'a credit to the Emperor and our times, to the Forum
and its speakers', as Pliny reported, in a letter to a provincial friend. It fell to one
of the suffect consuls in office, Cornelius Tacitus, to deliver the address, 'a most
eloquent orator, whose tribute put the crowning touch to Verginius' good
fortune.' Rufus had prepared a brief verse epitaph for his own tomb: 'Here
lies Rufus, who once defeated Vindex and set free the imperial power - not for
himself but for his country'. Tacitus will certainly have expatiated at much
greater length on Rufus' role in 68 and 69. That the circumstances in 97 were
uncannily similar to those in 68, following the death of Nero, with an aging,
childless new ruler, was no doubt apparent to all. Tacitus himself was surely
inspired, at least in part, by the commission to commemorate Verginius Rufus,
to compose something else - the biography of Agricola, a kind of substitute for
the funeral speech that his absence had made impossible in 93. Besides which, in
93 he could not have spoken freely. For fifteen years - a substantial portion of a
man's life - silence had been imposed. Now a happier era had dawned: Nerva
Caesar reconciled what had once seemed an impossible combination, principate
and liberty. 3
By the time that the Life of Agricola had been published, there had been
further dramatic developments. In October 97 the Praetorian Guard mutinied
and besieged the Palace. They demanded vengeance for the murder of
Domitian. Nerva was panic-stricken, vomiting with fear, but still attempted
resistance, inviting the men to kill him. It was no good. He was forced to hand
over Domitian's killers, who were lynched by the troops - and the Princeps was
compelled by the Guard Prefect Casperius Aelianus to offer solemn thanks. His
position was becoming desperate. Secret and urgent consultations must have
followed. Meanwhile better news came, from the Danube. A minor victory over
the eastern German tribes had been won by the governor of Pannonia. Nerva
assumed the title Germanicus and proceeded to the Temple of Jupiter on the
Capitol, to deposit the laurels of victory. Then - under divine inspiration -
Pliny would claim, he made a proclamation: 'May Good Fortune attend the
Roman Senate and people and myself: I adopt Marcus Ulpius Traianus.' 4
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PRINCIPA TUS ET LIBERTAS
Trajan, Pliny asserts, was reluctant and had to be persuaded to accept the
adoption, which carried the title Caesar and the succession. He added the name
of Nerva to his own, together with the newly assumed title Germanicus, and was
shortly afterwards granted the imperium and the tribunicia potestas; but
remained on the Rhine. A late source, the Epitome de Caesaribus, using Marius
Maximus' lost lives of Nerva and Trajan, has a brief but striking remark about
Trajan's coming to power: he seized it {imperium arripuerai), with the support
of Licinius Sura. Even Pliny hints at something other than a totally unexpected
elevation. For Nerva to have acted otherwise, he pronounced, would have been
wanton and tyrannical: it was clear that Trajan would have become Emperor
even if Nerva had not adopted him. Sura's role in this is obscure; it is not even
certain whether he was at Rome or perhaps governing a province in the vicinity
of Upper Germany. Trajan had, in any case, other support, above all from two
senior senators at Rome, Julius Frontinus and Julius Ursus. Their 'care and
vigilance' in Trajan's interests would be rewarded with high honours from
Trajan. Most people must, nonetheless, have been surprised. Trajan, for all his
distinction and the eminence of his father, was of provincial stock. Tacitus, com-
pleting the biography of his father-in-law at this time, claims, it is true, that
Agricola used to prophesy Trajan's accession to the power 'in our hearing', and
pray for it - this would have been at least seven years before it happened. One
may have leave to doubt. 5
The elevation of Hadrian's kinsman produced an understandable reaction in
the province where he was stationed. He was chosen to take the Lower Moesian
army's congratulations to the new Caesar on the Rhine - as one of a great host
of such emissaries from all over the empire, there can be no doubt. Before he
left, he may have sought out an astrologer. At any rate, the only other item that
the Historia Augusta {HA) has to report on Hadrian's stay in Lower Moesia is
that there 'a certain mathematicus confirmed what his great-uncle Aelius
Hadrian us had already predicted, that he would become emperor.' 6
O n Hadrian's arrival in Germany, he was retained, with yet another tribunate,
this time in the Moguntiacum legion, XXII Primigenia. Trajan handed over his
Upper German command and moved to the residence of the Lower German
governor, the Colonia Agrippinensis (Cologne), evidently taking over the role of
legate himself. His replacement at Moguntiacum was Julius Servianus, Hadrian's
brother-in-law, and himself close to Trajan - and to the influential Julius Ursus,
probably Servianus' kinsman. Hadrian's third military tribunate is unparalleled
— only one other case is attested, some twenty-five years later. But the circum-
stances in 97 were very special: Hadrian, was now, after all, the nearest male
kinsman of the heir to the throne. His relations with his new immediate chief
were not very happy. At least, the HA claims that Servianus reported adversely
to Trajan: Hadrian was spending money lavishly and was running up debts - no
doubt there were plenty of people willing to lend to such a well-placed young
man. One wonders what opportunities there were for spending money on the
Rhine. Over the river from Moguntiacum was a small spa, Aquae Mattiacae
37
PRINCIPATUS ET LIBERT AS
(Wiesbaden), which might have offered some modest scope for the high life.
All the same, fifteen years later, visiting the Rhine armies as Emperor, Hadrian
himself made a determined attempt to stamp out 'luxury' in the military bases.
Perhaps he was buying expensive horses and dogs, to indulge his passion for
hunting: it was the right season of the year. Aside from pleasure, he will have
had the chance of seeing for himself the new frontier system of forts and watch-
towers which Domitian had set in place in the lands across the river, the fertile
plain bounded by wooded hills to the north and east, by the River Moenus
(Main) to the south. A fellow-tribune of senatorial rank, Junius Avitus, praised
by Pliny (who had probably recommended him) for 'his deference to Servianus'
high standards', was certainly more congenial to Servianus than his self-assertive
young brother-in-law. 7
News from Rome in early February brought Hadrian the chance of escape:
Nerva had died on 27 January and Trajan was declared emperor the next
day. A courier probably arrived at Moguntiacum within a week. Hadrian was
determined to inform Trajan at Cologne in person. Servianus, for his part,
sent his own messenger - and, another sign of his bad relations with Hadrian,
had the carriage Hadrian was using put out of commission, so the HA reports.
Undeterred, the story goes on, Hadrian proceeded on foot and completed the
110 miles or so (180 km) before Servianus' man. That his carriage broke down
is not impossible, and that he was obliged to walk some of the way is also likely
enough. But whether Servianus had got someone to tamper with the vehicle is
another matter; and one may suspect that Hadrian was able to commandeer
horses for a good part of the distance. The version in the HA surely derives from
Hadrian's autobiography, written forty years later, when he had reason to
blacken Servianus' memory, and at the same time to exaggerate his own youthful
fitness.8
Hadrian remained with Trajan - who still chose to stay on the Rhine - and
was now 'in his favour'. Trajan's first measure, no doubt, was to order the deifi-
cation of Nerva and the burial of his remains in the Mausoleum of Augustus.
He promised the Senate by letter that he would 'neither put to death nor exile
any good man'. He was able to instal his trusted supporters in positions of
influence. Frontinus and Ursus were rewarded with second consulships early
in the year. Two close friends, Cornelius Palma and Sosius Senecio - the latter,
the son-in-law of Frontinus, as governor of Belgica was probably close by - were
designated to be consules ordinarii for 99. 9
The Guard Prefect, Casperius Aelianus, duly appeared, to take up his post at
the new ruler's side. But his role in the mutiny of the previous October could not
be overlooked. He was put to death, and a successor appointed, Attius
Suburanus. This man was already on the spot. He had been serving as procurator
of Belgica, hence as paymaster of the Rhine armies. When Trajan handed him his
sword of office, he bared the blade, held it up and told Suburanus: 'If I rule well,
use this for me - if badly, against me.' Trajan had already created his own elite
troops, as a counterweight to the Praetorians, converting the mounted guards of
38
Plate 1 Coin portrait of Trajan, from the period 104-114 (BMC III Trajan no. 853)
the legate of Lower Germany into Imperial Horse Guards, equites singulares
Augusti. In effect this was to revive the German bodyguards of the Julio-Claudian
emperors, the corpore custodes. The majority of these men had been Batavians
(from modern Netherlands), and so too were Trajan's new Horse Guards. The ab
epistulis, the Imperial Chief Secretary, Titinius Capito, must also have arrived,
with a host of other high officials. He was the first man of equestrian rank in this
post, previously held by imperial freedmen. Capito had been appointed by
Domitian at the end of his reign and retained in office by Nerva. Trajan too kept
him on, an important sign of continuity between the 'despotism' of Domitian
and the new dawn of liberty.10
Capito will have had numerous letters to draft. Trajan must have been flooded
with correspondence. Pliny's letter to the new Emperor happens to survive:
'Your filial loyalty, Most Sacred Emperor, made you wish to succeed your father
as late as possible, but the immortal gods have hastened to put the government
of the commonwealth in your hands.' No reply is preserved - perhaps it was too
brief to be published. He used his friendship with Servianus for something more
specific, a personal privilege, the ius trium liberorum (the honorary rights of a
father of three children), useful for his career: fatherhood, which Pliny had failed
to achieve despite two marriages, brought more rapid advancement. Trajan was
duly thanked 'for granting this at the wish of Julius Servianus, an excellent man
and most favoured by yourself'. 11
39
The fact that Trajan remained on the northern frontier may have provoked
speculation that he intended to launch a German campaign. One of those who
may have hoped for, or expected, such a development was Cornelius Tacitus.
His biography of Agricola was completed, his debt of pietas to his father-in-law
paid. At the same time, the short work constituted a powerful political state-
ment in justification of those who, like his father-in-law and himself, and, to be
sure, like Trajan, had continued their careers under the 'despotism' of Domitian.
He had also poured scorn on Domitian's 'pretended' German victory, contrasted
with the true glory of Agricola's British conquests. Now Tacitus began a mono-
graph on the Germans. He was well equipped for the task, for his own father
had served as procurator of Belgica and the Germanies, and he himself had in
all likelihood commanded a legion on the Rhine. All the same, he obviously
used existing literature on Germany, for example a book by the elder Pliny, as
the basis for his own treatise. He may simply have picked on the subject because
it was topical, all eyes being focused on the new Emperor. He summarises
Rome's relations with the Germans from the invasions of the Cimbri and
Teutones in the late second century BC down to AD 98 as '210 years of (alleged)
Roman successes' against this people, over whom (a contemptuous dismissal
of Domitian's wars) in recent times 'triumphs have been celebrated rather than
victories won'. 12
If Tacitus hoped for a new German expedition, he was disappointed. Instead,
Trajan moved from the Rhine across to the Danube, taking with him Julius
Servianus, who was made governor of Pannonia - and brought Pliny's protege
Junius Avitus, his tribunus laticlavius, with him. Trajan himself wintered in
Moesia, to assess the peoples - Sarmatians and Dacians - across the Danube that
had caused repeated problems for Rome in the past decade and more. Pliny
dutifully enlarges on the respect shown to Trajan by Rome's enemies and the
admiration his own men had for his active participation in manoeuvres. It was
quite late in the year 99 before he eventually set off for Italy. 'Your people's
prayers were calling you home', Pliny was to say. The imperial adventus was
suitably modest and unpretentious, Trajan dismounting to enter the city on
foot, to proceed through the assembled ranks of Senate, knights and plebs, amid
universal delight. After sacrifice on the Capitol, the imperial party proceeded to
the Palace, Trajan 'walking with the same demeanour as if entering a private
house'. Plotina added to the favourable impression by turning round on the
steps to the people and saying: 'I enter this building the same woman as I hope
to leave it.' 13
Hadrian, who presumably returned to Rome in the imperial entourage, still
enjoyed Trajan's approval. A problem would soon arise, duly reported by the
HA, but in a passage where the text is defective. Hadrian had trouble with 'the
paedagogi [attendants or tutors] of the boys that Trajan very greatly loved'. The
reference is clearly to pages of the imperial household. Trajan's fondness for boys
- and for wine - is attested by Cassius Dio. Like Domitian, then, Trajan had
his Ganymedes - but this did no one any harm, Dio adds, and he could hold
40
PRiNCiPATUS £T / IBPPPAS
Plate 2 Plouna, Trajan's Km press {bus? from Museo Vuticano, Rome)
41
his drink. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Hadrian had encroached
on the Emperor's prerogative and had got too close to the page-boys. His open
passion, thirty years later, for a beautiful youth would make his own homo-
sexuality universal knowledge. Someone called Gallus evidently intervened on
Hadrian's behalf, but he was still anxious about the Emperor's attitude to him,
the HA goes on. It is then claimed that Hadrian resorted to consulting the
'Virgilian lots', opening the Aeneid2X random to gain a prophecy of his future
- the answer was allegedly a passage in the Sixth Book, describing King Numa.
This may be an invention by the author of the HA, like what follows: the
Virgilian oracle, 'according to others', may have 'come from the Sibylline Verses'.
All the same, even if the story was invented, the chances are that it was Hadrian
himself who was reponsible. There are clear signs that he deliberately fostered
a comparison between himself and N u m a when he became Emperor. The HA
further asserts that he also, at this time, learned that he would become Emperor
from an oracular response in the Temple of Jupiter (Zeus) Nicephorius (at
Antioch). The HA cites as its source for the latter story the work of an other-
wise unknown 'Syrian Platonist' named Apollonius. If there is anything - other
than the fantasy of the HA - in this, it too should belong later, when Hadrian
was himself in Syria.14
More plausible is the next item in the HA, that Hadrian was restored to a
totally friendly relationship with Trajan through the good offices of Licinius
Sura. There is no doubt that Sura was one of Trajan's closest friends and advisers,
closer to him, perhaps, than anyone else. Julius Frontinus, it is true, was
obviously the most senior adviser, sharing the ordinary consulship with Trajan
in the year 100. But Frontinus was an old man - he expired a few years later.
Dio singles Sura out for the mutual 'friendship and confidence' between him
and the Emperor. There was some jealousy and hostile criticism, Dio adds,
which Trajan took pains to disarm by turning up for dinner uninvited at Sura's
mansion, dismissing his guards, and having his friend's barber shave him. The
next day he said to his other friends, who had been disparaging Sura, 'If Sura
had really wanted to kill me, he would have done it yesterday.' Among his other
services, Sura functioned as imperial speechwriter. Hadrian also enjoyed the
backing of the Empress, and it was through her urging that Trajan's grand-niece
Sabina was assigned to Hadrian as a bride. According to Marius Maximus
(so the HA records), Trajan's enthusiasm for this match had been less than
whole-hearted. It was indeed a significant further step forward for Hadrian. He
was now twenty-four, his bride some ten years younger, so it is assumed. It was
everything other than a love-match - although Hadrian was devoted to Matidia,
his mother-in-law, now widowed, whom the childless Trajan treated like a
daughter. 15
The marriage must have taken place in AD 100, shortly before Hadrian
entered the Senate as quaestor in early December of that year. As he was
approaching his twenty-fifth birthday (24 January 101) when he took up this
first senatorial magistracy, he was at the normal age. In other words, he had not
42
PRINCiPATUS El UBERTAS
Phne J Matidia, 1 hulrian's mother-in-law

(bust from Museo tic! l\ila//,o ilci Conservatoiu Rome)
43
Plate -/ Sabina, with the attributes of the goddess (>res
(statue from Osiia Museum)
received accelerated advancement because of his kinship with Trajan; but he was
at least one of the Emperor's own quaestors. It may be, however, that he had by
now been enrolled in two of the priestly colleges reserved for senators, the
Vllviri epulonum and the sodales Augustales. The Athens o/m^-inscription of
Hadrian, which registers these priesthoods, puts them out of chronological
order. It is reasonable to conjecture that he received this distinction when he
became a senator. The Vllviri — by now ten in number - were the most junior
of the four great colleges of priests, less prestigious than the pontifices or augurs
or XVviri. But they were nonetheless counted as one of the Tour great colleges',
in which only a minority of the senators could expect enrolment; and the priests
of the deified Augustus stood not far behind in public esteem. 16
Admission to the priestly colleges, like most other distinctions, was controlled
by the Emperor. When a vacancy arose, the existing members could make nom-
inations - thus Pliny, when he finally became an augur, told a friend that he had
been nominated repeatedly by Frontinus. He finally got in when Frontinus died,
as his replacement. As it happens, there was a vacancy in the college of Vllviri
precisely in the year 100, not, as was usually the case, through death. One of
the members, a recent proconsul of Africa, Marius Priscus, had been expelled.
He had been tried in the Senate for extortion, the prosecuting counsel being
Tacitus and Pliny. In any case, another VHvir had died the previous year - L.
Vibius Sabinus, the presumed father of Hadrians bride. Pliny had also
approached Trajan himself on his own behalf: 'No higher tribute could be paid
to my reputation than some mark of favour from so excellent a princeps. I pray
you, therefore, to add to the honours to which I have been raised by your
generosity by granting me a priesthood, either an augurate or a septemvirate,
as there is a vacancy in both orders.' Pliny had to wait. Someone else got the
augurate and it may have been Hadrian who became a VHvir}7
Of the surviving members of the college, it is a fair guess that Hadrian was
supported by Julius Quadratus, the influential man from Pergamum, who, it was
suggested earlier, may have nominated Hadrian as Prefect during the Latin
festival in 94. Membership of this college would bring Hadrian into close touch
with his fellow- Vllviri, for example at the banquets {epulae) which, as their title
indicates, they had to hold in honour of Jupiter and the other gods (hardly any-
thing else is known about their duties). They were an impressive group of men,
including, as well as Quadratus, Atilius Agricola, from Augusta Taurinorum
(Turin), one of the up-and-coming senators who had Trajan's favour, like
Hadrian also a sodalis Augustalis, Cilnius Proculus, from Arretium (Arrezzo) in
Etruria, Neratius Priscus, from Saepinum in the Samnite country, consul in 97
and then for a brief term legate of Germania Inferior, and the now elderly
Domitius Tullus, the immensely wealthy and influential Narbonensian. 18
Not yet a senator in 100, Hadrian will not have had to sit through the lengthy
speech of thanks delivered by one of the consuls that summer, Pliny's Panegyric,
although, as a senator's son he would have been entitled to attend. If Trajan
himself had to listen to it, his warm feelings towards the effusive orator may
45
PRINCIPA TUS ET LI BERT AS
have been slightly reduced. In its published form the speech would have taken
up to six hours to deliver, and even the original may have tried the imperial
patience. Whether or not he was present when the consul Pliny delivered the
original version before the Senate, Hadrian might have had the chance of hear-
ing a revised and expanded Panegyric, read in instalments on three successive
days to an invited audience, and later published. Pliny's aim was not merely to
pay tribute to the Emperor, but to show his successors what path to follow. More
to Hadrian's taste may have been an address by the Bithynian Greek intellectual,
Dio of Prusa, On Kingship, probably delivered before Trajan at this time. 19
As quaestor of the Emperor, Hadrian had the task of reading out Trajan's
speeches in his absence. It is somewhat surprising to learn from the HA that 'he
was laughed at for his rather "rustic" accent.' His reaction was 'to give attention
to the study of Latin until he had acquired complete proficiency and fluency.' It
is hard to believe that he had picked up a 'Spanish' accent in his short stay at
Italica a decade earlier. Perhaps, rather, his unusually long spell in the army and
association with centurions and rankers affected his diction. In any case, he had
no doubt been continuing to devote himself to Greek rather than Latin. He is
known to have attended at some point lectures by the Syrian Greek sophist
Isaeus, who was in Rome in about the year 100. Pliny enthused about the
sixty-year-old sophist: he spoke perfect Attic Greek and charmed his audience
with brilliant extempore efforts. 'If you are not eager to meet him', he told his
correspondent, 'you must really be iron-willed and stony-hearted.' 20
Hadrian was also given another duty, mentioned by the HA but not listed on
the Athens inscription, 'curator of the Acts of the Senate', in other words,
responsibility for the official reports of proceedings in the House. This record
was a valuable source for historians; Tacitus, for one, would make good use of
the Acta Senatus. Whether he was already combing the senatorial archives in
101, for his Histories of the years 6 9 - 9 6 , cannot be known. For one thing, he
might have been governing a province at this time. 21
Hadrian's first senatorial duties at Rome were not to last more than a few
months. O n 25 March 101 Trajan left to wage war against the Dacian king
Decebalus and took with him Hadrian, still his quaestor but now also a member
of his staff, comes Augusti, as the Athens inscription makes clear. As comes he
served alongside Sura, Servian us and other leading figures. Trajan had been
preparing for the war for over two years; this was, no doubt, the principal reason
for his visit to Moesia in 9 8 - 9 . The Dacians had been recognised as a threat
since the time of Julius Caesar and the growth of the kingdom under Decebalus
had given Domitian considerable trouble. Rome's loss of face in his wars had not
been made good. A force of ten legions now stood ready on the Danube,
together with a good 60,000 men from the regiments of auxilia and additional
detachments from the armies of Britain and the east. Trajan brought the
Praetorians, with a new Guard Prefect, Claudius Livianus, and the Horse
Guards. The war was to last for two campaigning seasons and would end in a
Dacian surrender. 22
46
The HA has a characteristically brief and trivial record of Hadrian's involve-
ment: 'He followed Trajan to the Dacian War in a position of fairly close
intimacy; at this time, indeed, he [Hadrian] states that he indulged in wine
too, so as to fall in with Trajan's habits, and that he was very richly rewarded for
this by Trajan.' Hadrian thus clearly wrote something about his service in his
autobiography. But, it seems from what follows, he was only at the front for the
first year. It may be inferred that he accompanied Trajan in his capacity as
quaestor, in good old Republican fashion, and that when his term of office
expired he returned to Rome to pursue his career.23
The HA records next that he was made tribune of the plebs, giving as the date
the consuls of the year 105. But a few lines later, Hadrian's next office, the
praetorship, is dated to the consulship of 'Subsuranus and Servianus', both for
the second time. There must be a confusion here, first between Suburanus and
Sura. The latter held his second consulship, as colleague of Servianus, in 102.
Suburanus, who had been Guard Prefect from 98 onwards, after giving up this
office had become a senator and suffect consul in 101, and was consul for the
second time, as ordinarius, in 104. Either the HA, or its source Marius Maximus,
has muddled the names and dates. The most plausible solution is that Hadrian
returned to Rome in the late autumn of 101, to hold office as tribune of
the plebs for 102 - starting, according to the old practice for tribunes, on 10
December 101. If this is right, it means that the normal requirement of the
cursus honorum, that there should be a year's interval between offices, was waived
in his case: there will have been less than a week between the end of the
quaestorship on 4 December and the start of the tribunate on 10 December.
Such an exemption could, then, be a modest sign of favour from Trajan,
enabling his kinsman to become tribune a little before the completion of his
twenty-sixth year.24
Servianus and Sura, as ordinarii for 102, ought in the normal course of events
to have been at Rome, but, because of the war, they may have held office in
absentia. Servianus, it may be noted, had in the meantime changed his name,
being styled 'L. Julius Ursus Servianus' instead of'Ser. Julius Servianus'. He had
clearly inherited the new items from Trajan's powerful ally L. Julius Ursus. Sura,
at least, played a personal role in Dacia during 102, being sent with the Guard
Prefect Claudius Livianus to negotiate with the Dacian king. In the event,
Decebalus 'was afraid and would not meet them.' As for Servianus, he too had
surely been on Trajan's staff, at least in 101. A letter to him from his friend Pliny,
anxious for news, suggests that he was at the front. One major victory
was already won in the first campaign. In 102 further victories were achieved.
The Moorish chieftain Lusius Quietus, commanding a force of his fellow-
countrymen, and Laberius Maximus, governor of Lower Moesia, are singled out
for their successes in the scanty historical record. Decebalus was compelled
to sue for peace. He surrendered his 'arms, engines and engineers, demolished
forts, gave back deserters, withdrew from captured territory and became an ally
of the Roman people. Trajan left garrisons all over Dacia and returned to Rome
47
to hold a triumph and take the title Dacicus.' Large tracts of land north of the
lower Danube were annexed, south-west Dacia being added to Upper Moesia,
and a very much greater slice of territory on its eastern side to a much expanded
province of Lower Moesia. 25
In the course of his service Hadrian would have had the opportunity to form
links with members of the high command. Sosius Senecio, who played a promi-
nent role, is explicitly listed as a personal friend of his ten years later, likewise the
Guard Prefect Claudius Livianus, a Lycian from Sidyma. Q. Pompeius Falco,
later to become Senecio s son-in-law, commanded V Macedonica in this war, and
was to hold important posts under Hadrian. It may be assumed that they became
acquainted in 101, if not before. He should also have got to know another
legionary legate, Julius Quadratus Bassus of Pergamum, commander of XI
Claudia. Two further important figures, Atilius Agricola, governing Pannonia,
and Cilnius Proculus, legate of Upper Moesia, were fellow- Vllviri. Another
person whom Hadrian must have met was Trajan's architect, Apollodorus
of Damascus, responsible for erecting the bridge across the Danube at Drobeta
(Turnu Severin) at the end of the first campaign. 26
Hadrian supposedly had something to say about his tribunate of the plebs in
his autobiography. 'He claims that in this magistracy he was given an omen that
he would receive perpetual tribunician power [a prerogative of the Emperor], in
that he lost the paenulae, cloaks which the tribunes of the plebs used to wear
when it rained, but which the emperors never wear.' Thus the HA. But, as it
stands, this little story can hardly be authentic. The paenula was the standard
Roman raincoat, worn by all Romans, including emperors. At best, the HA has
misunderstood or distorted something in its source. Whether as tribune of the
plebs Hadrian had any serious duties to perform or made any effort to be active
in the Senate is doubtful. Pliny mentions an intervention by a tribune in the
debate of 97, when he himself attacked Publicius Certus. He also describes at
some length a sitting of the Senate in 105, when another tribune, Avidius
Nigrinus, took a personal initiative, denouncing the taking of fees by advocates.
Hadrian was probably content to keep a low profile, even if the times were now
different from forty years earlier, when Agricola as tribune passed his year in
'quiet inactivity', knowing that inertia was the wise way to comport oneself.
The very fact that Hadrian was tribune of the plebs at all is worth dwelling on:
it means that, in spite of his kinship with Trajan, he had not been made a patri-
cian. Indeed, the Athens inscription does not mention that he was the Emperor's
candidate in this post, or for the praetorship. For the time being, it seems, Trajan
wanted his former ward to be treated to some extent like a normal senator.
Nonetheless, as has been argued, he was allowed to become tribune a year earlier
than was laid down by the rules. 27
Hadrian's absence from Rome for most of 101 probably meant that he had
missed the prosecution for extortion, conducted by Pliny, of the proconsul
of Baetica, Caecilius Classicus. He had surely been kept informed by corre-
spondents about a case which affected his 'home' province. In 102-3 Pliny was
48
involved in another such trial, this time for the defence, of a proconsul of
Pontus-Bithynia, Julius Bassus. Business such as this may have seemed worthy
of the Senate, but Hadrian will not have gained a very positive impression
from some other senatorial sessions. Pliny reports with some indignation how
voting-tablets at a secret ballot had been found to have jokes and obscenities
scribbled on them. 28
In spite of such lapses, in 104 Hadrian duly secured election as praetor for
the next year. He was marginally younger than the prescribed age of thirty or
c
in one's thirtieth year': he would be twenty-nine on 24 January 105. An attempt
was made, it seems, to raise standards. One of his colleagues as praetor, Licinius
Nepos, conducted himself with old-fashioned sternness, even fining a senator for
non-attendance as a juror. As president of the Centumviral Court Nepos later
warned both prosecution and defence that he would enforce the regulations over
accepting fees strictly, the same question which was raised by the tribune
Nigrinus in 105. Nepos also intervened the next year in connection with
another extortion trial, again of a proconsul of Bithynia, Varenus Rufus. One of
the praetors of 106, Juventius Celsus, later a noted jurist, attacked Nepos
Violently and at length, as a would-be reformer of the Senate'. No activity of
this sort is recorded for Hadrian, only that he received a large sum of money
from Trajan to pay for the games he had to put on as praetor - games which,
as it turned out, he must have held in absentia. All the same, the years in which
Hadrian went through the old republican magistracies must have given him
some opportunity to familiarise himself with Roman law. Perhaps he presided
over a court as praetor. If so, it was only for five months at the most. 29
Hadrian was not to see out his year of office at Rome. For some time it had
been clear that Decebalus had been infringing the terms imposed on him in 102
- at least, that was the official Roman version. Trajan had been preparing for a
new campaign, his measures including the raising of two new legions, II Traiana
and XXX Ulpia Victrix. War was declared against Dacia in May 105. Trajan set
off for the Danube on 4 June and once again he took Hadrian with him, this
time giving him the command of the legion I Minervia. 30
49
5
THE YOUNG GENERAL
I Minervia, of which Hadrian took command in summer 105, was presumably

known to him. It had been stationed at Bonna on the Rhine, close to the Colonia
Agrippinensis (Cologne) where he had spent the early part of the year 98. He
could also have come across the legion in the first Dacian war, for which it had
been moved to the Danube. It had remained there at the end of the war, as one
of the fourteen or so legions now concentrated for the new war in Pannonia and
Moesia. I Minervia was a relatively new creation: it had been formed by
Domitian and given a name honouring that rulers favourite deity.1
The Roman offensive, carefully prepared - with the advantage of Apollodorus'
massive new stone bridge across the Danube - had not even begun when
Decebalus launched a pre-emptive strike. He evidently attacked Roman forces in
south-western Dacia, which had been occupied since 102 and added to Moesia
Superior. When the onslaught was repulsed, Decebalus attempted to have Trajan
murdered by Roman deserters, but this too failed. He now offered to negotiate
with the Roman commander north of the river, Pompeius Longinus, and treach-
erously took him prisoner. Decebalus tried bargaining with the high-ranking
hostage to force the evacuation of Rome's newly won territory. Trajan gave an
ambiguous response and Longinus solved his dilemma by committing suicide.
That Trajan had been the object of an assassination attempt may well have
prompted speculation about the succession. He had no children and had given
no sign that he would adopt a son, whether his young kinsman Hadrian or some-
one else. Pliny, in his Panegyric five years before, had prayed to Jupiter that Trajan
'may be granted a successor born to him . . . but, if fate denies him this, direct his
choice to someone worthy to be adopted in your Temple on the Capitol.' The
chances of a son being born were now remote. It was surely in the aftermath of
Decebalus' plot to kill him that Trajan pointed elsewhere. He is reported by
the HA to have 'once said to Neratius Priscus: "I commend the provinces to you
if anything should befall me."' Neratius Priscus was at this time, it seems, gov-
erning Pannonia. In other words, he was one of the men on the spot, although
the main focus of the Roman war effort was further down the Danube. 2
Neratius Priscus was to become best known as a jurist, and, jointly, with
Juventius Celsus, praetor the next year, as the leader of the 'Proculian school',
50
THE YOUNG GENERAL
one of the two principal traditions in the interpretation of Roman law that grew
up in the early principate. In spite of his renown as a jurist, Priscus' service as
governor of two major military provinces demonstrates that he was an 'all-
rounder'. Furthermore, his brother Marcellus had been governing Britain shortly
before. Neratius Priscus might have made an ideal emperor. Whether or not
Trajan was entirely serious, and whether his 'entrusting the provinces' to Priscus
'if anything should happen to me' was really intended as the nomination of a
successor, is another matter. Another story, in an excerpt from Cassius Dio for
which no date can be conjectured, has Trajan at a banquet asking his friends to
name him 'ten men capable of being emperor' - capax imperii, as Tacitus would
have put it. 'After a moment's pause, he added - "I only need nine names, one
I have already, Servianus."' Hadrian's brother-in-law undoubtedly enjoyed
high favour from Trajan, as his second consulate with Sura in 102 had shown.
But this anecdote, too, can hardly be taken as an indication of Trajan's real
intentions. He was strong and active, not quite 50 years old, and did not need
or want to nominate a successor.3
The tortuous transactions involving a high Roman officer's fate may have
occupied the remainder of the campaigning season of 105. At any rate, the
decisive Roman offensive was launched in the spring of 106. In a series of battles
the Dacian forces were pushed back into the interior. Their capital, Sarmi-
zegethusa, was captured, and Decebalus committed suicide to avoid capture. A
Roman cavalryman named Claudius Maximus, arriving just too late to capture
the king alive, cut off his head and brought it to Trajan at a place called
Ranisstorum. It was sent to Rome, to be hurled down the Gemonian Steps, the
traditional fate for enemies of the Roman People. His kingdom was now
annexed: Dacia was to be a new Roman province, the first such acquisition for
more than half a century. To add to the sense of revived glory and expansion, in
the same year (106) another new territory was added to the empire in the east:
the governor of Syria, Cornelius Palma, peacefully took over the Nabataean king-
dom east of the River Jordan and in the Negev, creating the province of Arabia.
Mopping up operations in Dacia no doubt followed the death of Decebalus, but
by the end of 106, with victory won, Roman units were busily erecting new forts
around the frontiers.4
The new province of Dacia, with a garrison of at least two legions, was
assigned to Julius Sabinus. There was plenty for him to do. If he is the Sabinus
who received a letter from Pliny - in response to Sabinus' own request for long
and frequent missives - his 'life under arms, the camps, bugles and trumpets,
sweat and dust and heat of the sun would hardly put him in the frame of mind
to read about Pliny's trivial activities, so Pliny modestly put it. The organisation
of the newly conquered province was a major undertaking. According to the
fourth-century chronicler Eutropius, 'to cultivate the fields and inhabit the cities
[including a newly founded colonia Ulpia Sarmizegethusa, replacing, at a differ-
ent site, the old royal capital], countless settlers were brought in from all over
the Roman world, for Dacia had been drained of its manpower during the long
51
THE YOUNG GENERAL
war.' Apart from loss of life, tens of thousands of Dacian prisoners of war had
been taken, to be sold as slaves or die as gladiators in the spectacles held in 107
to celebrate the victory.5
Hadrian's personal role in the war is described only briefly by the HA: At this
time, certainly, his many outstanding deeds became renowned.' The Athens
inscription adds that he received military decorations {dona militaria) from
Trajan for both Dacian wars. What he actually did to earn the decorations the
second time round can only be conjectured. The leading part was played, as in
the first war, by Sura and Senecio. Their reward was a further consulship each,
Sura's third, Senecio's second, for 107. Hadrian apparently got something else,
though: 'Having been presented with a diamond which Trajan had been given
by Nerva, he was encouraged to hope for the imperial succession.' The 'encour-
agement' may have been a subjective reaction on Hadrian's part. There is no
guarantee that Trajan mentioned the succession when he made the gift.6
Hadrian remained in the north when the war ended. The province of
Pannonia was now divided into two, Superior and Inferior, and Hadrian
became governor of the latter, smaller part. Pannonia Inferior retained only one
legion, II Adiutrix, and the governor was thus at the same time legate of the
legion. The model was Numidia, where the legate of III Augusta was - in his
case only de facto - also the governor. Judaea had been, since 7 1 , a second
example of a one-legion province and now there was also the newly formed
province of Arabia. Thus ten years after his first service at Aquincum Hadrian
was back as the chief, taking office perhaps precisely on 11 June 106, which,
as has been plausibly conjectured, was probably the day when Pannonia was
divided. This is, at any rate, a good reason why 11 June was subsequently
treated as an important anniversary in both Pannonias for several hundred
years to come. Hadrian had been promoted after barely twelve months as
legate of I Minervia. He thereby no longer had a front-line role in the Dacian
war just when it reached its decisive phase, between June and the beginning of
August. He may nonetheless have had a new and important task, to guard the
Roman western flank.7
Lower Pannonia faced the Sarmatian Jazyges of the Hungarian plain, an
unruly people which had several times fought against Rome. While they may
have supported Rome against the Dacians, they apparently had to be 'restrained'
by Hadrian. Perhaps what was involved was a precautionary move, to ensure that
the Sarmatians behaved while the final drive against the Dacians was in full
swing. The HA supplies no further details. Trouble with the Sarmatians no
doubt continued when the Dacian war ended: Trajan declined to return to them
territory which they had lost to Decebalus, so Cassius Dio reports. Perhaps they
tried to grab it back in the summer of 106 and were 'restrained' from this by
Hadrian. 8
As the first governor of a 'new' province, Hadrian was justified in creating
suitable accommodation, for himself and a substantial household. He may now
have been joined by his wife Sabina, but will certainly have had personal servants
52
THE YOUNG GENERAL
suitable to his rank. The gubernatorial palace, on an island in the Danube, later
to become the most impressive building at Aquincum, may well have been
commissioned by Hadrian. Indeed, given his later reputation as a would-be
architect, he probably designed it himself. Its commanding position, facing
the potentially hostile Sarmatians, represented in itself a statement of Roman
self-confidence.9
Two further laconic remarks about Hadrians service in Lower Pannonia are
offered by the HA: 'He preserved military discipline and checked the procurators
who were overstepping the mark.' A drive to restore discipline in the army was to
be one of the keynotes of his policy in the early years of his reign. As for his firm
hand with the procurators, this is an instructive contrast with the conduct of
Agricola in a comparable governorship thirty years before. As Tacitus had written
a few years earlier, his father-in-law as legate of Aquitania had refrained from
'disputes (contentione) with procurators'. W h o is meant by 'procurators' in
Hadrian's case is not clear, perhaps freedmen as well as the senior Roman knight
responsible for collection of taxes and paying the army. The wise governor
refrained from involvement in fiscal matters, which were the equestrian procu-
rator's responsibility. If the procurator of the Emperor or his freedmen assistants
were behaving oppressively or infringing on the legate's prerogatives, Hadrian
may have acted, confident of Trajan's backing. As Emperor, he himself would
clamp down on procurators and governors alike with an iron hand. 10
Governorships, especially of provinces with a garrison, gave the opportunity
for patronage. There were commissions for six tribunes, one senatorial, in the
legion, and at least as many for equestrian officers commanding auxiliary regi-
ments. Army commanders could appoint their friends and proteges - and would
receive letters from fellow-senators recommending suitable persons. Pompeius
Falco, at this time governing another one-legion province, Judaea, was approached
by Pliny. 'You will be less surprised how much I press this recommendation for a
military tribunate, when you learn who the man is and what he is like.' Cornelius
Minicianus was 'an ornament of my home district'. Pliny's request may have
been turned down by Falco. He had had more success a few years earlier with
Neratius Marcellus, from whom he procured a tribunate in the army of Britain
for his scholarly young friend Suetonius Tranquillus (who then backed out).
Pliny was a correspondent of several persons close to Hadrian, including
Servianus and Sura, but Hadrian himself is absent from the nine books of private
letters. All the same, a man from the 'Pliny country', P. Clodius Sura of Brixia
(Brescia), who was to be made curator of C o m u m by Hadrian as Emperor, had
earlier served as equestrian tribune of II Adiutrix. One may at least ask whether
he could have been recommended to Hadrian by Pliny, but it remains, of course,
pure speculation. Another man who served under Hadrian as equestrian tribune
of the legion may have been M. Vettius Latro, who had been decorated for
service in the first Dacian war as prefect of a Pannonian unit, went on to be
tribune of II Adiutrix and then to command a cavalry regiment in Dacia. Latro
was then to hold a few procuratorships, of modest rank. Over twenty years later
53
THE YOUNG GENERAL
Hadrian would give this man, whose home was in African Thuburbo Maius, a
considerable boost to his career.11
It was also part of the governor's duties to appoint and promote centurions.
Whether Marcius Turbo, known to have become Hadrian's trusted friend, was
still a centurion in II Adiutrix is, of course, uncertain. Perhaps not by coincidence
it was at about the time when Hadrian returned to Pannonia Inferior that Turbo
achieved a major step up the ladder, becoming praefectus vehiculorum, in charge
of the imperial posting-service, the cursus publicus. He had by then, presumably,
been chief centurion of a legion, not necessarily, of course, II Adiutrix. Turbo
may at least have had backing from Hadrian.12
A praetorian imperial province carried with it the expectation of the consul-
ship. Hadrian might have hoped for the prestige of being ordinarius, opening the
year and giving it his name. But once again, as with the withholding of patrician
rank, he had to be content with a lesser prize. The consules ordinarii of the year
108, Ap. Annius Gallus and M. Atilius Bradua, were men of consular parentage,
which Hadrian lacked, and Bradua at least was also a patrician. Hadrian achieved
only a suffect consulship, with M. Trebatius Priscus. But it came a mere two
years or less after he had begun his governorship, probably in May 108, and he
was only thirty-two. He had thus reached, almost a decade earlier than most
plebeians, the office to which all senators still aspired. The republican minimum
age, forty-two, or the forty-second year, was still enforced. But Augustus had
allowed patricians and members of consular families to hold the fasces zs young as
thirty-one. The HA attributes Hadrian's consulship to his successful conduct as
governor. In truth, unless he had made a complete hash of his duties, the office
followed almost automatically.13
It may be that he held his consulship in absentia and continued to govern his
province on into 109. His presumed successor, Julius Maximus Manlianus, is
first attested in Pannonia in July 110 and became consul in 112. However this
may be, while Hadrian was holding the consulship, 'he learned from Sura that
he was to be adopted by Trajan, and was then no longer despised and ignored
by Trajan's friends.' This report probably goes back to Hadrian's autobiography,
and must be treated with some caution. Sura himself died shortly afterwards, to
be honoured by Trajan with a public funeral and a statue. Whether Hadrian was
already back in Rome for his consulship in early summer 108 or only some
months later, perhaps just before Sura died (unless Sura imparted Trajan's inten-
tions by letter), he acquired a new closeness to Trajan. Further, other proteges
of Sura, such as Minicius Natalis of Barcino, may now have looked to Hadrian
as their patron. Sura had composed Trajan's speeches for him, and this role now
fell to Hadrian, as the HA reports - not mentioning that Sura had been the
previous imperial speechwriter. Sura and Hadrian may also have assisted the
Emperor to compose his own history of the Dacian wars.14
Sura was not the only person of distinction to pass away at this time.
Domitius Tullus, one of the richest men in Rome, died in late 108 or early 109.
His will provided opportunity for gossip: 'we talk about nothing else in the city',
54
THE YOUNG GENERAL
Pliny wrote to a friend. The old man, 'crippled and deformed in every limb,
unable to turn over in bed without assistance or to clean his own teeth', had
been the object of attention from numerous legacy-hunters. In the event, he
made his niece and adoptive daughter, Domitia Lucilla, his principal heiress,
with legacies to his grandsons and great-granddaughter. 'In fact, the whole will
is ample proof of his affection for his family, and so all the more unexpected.'
His widow, who had been severely criticised for marrying the old man, inherited
beautiful villas and a large sum of money.15
It seems that parts of the testament of Tullus have survived on stone, from
a large marble funerary monument on the Via Appia. In modern times the
testator was identified as a Dasumius, from the Corduban family related to
Hadrian. A newly discovered fragment has ruled this name out. The inscription,
of which the text had been drawn up between May and August 108, while
Hadrian was consul, can be assigned instead to Domitius Tullus. The funeral,
so it was laid down, was to be supervised by the testator's friend Julius Servianus,
whose daughter Julia Paulina, Hadrian's niece, was a beneficiary. So too, among
many others, but named in a special codicil at the end, were the Emperor and
Sosius Senecio. Tullus' son-in-law, P. Calvisius Ruso, husband of Lucilla (not her
first - she already had a granddaughter from a previous marriage), was to take
the testator's name. He duly appears, as consul for 109, under the style 'P.
Calvisius Tullus. Tullus' widow turns out to have been called Dasumia Polla,
from a Corduban family linked to that of Hadrian. The testator, himself of
southern Gallic origin, is shown by this inscription to have been closely linked
to Baetica. His family network epitomises high Roman society in the early
second century, the Baetican Emperor and his Narbonensian Empress being
merely the apex of the now dominant colonial elite. The infant daughter of
Tullus Ruso and Lucilla would become, after her marriage to a young man from
another Baetican family, the mother of Marcus Aurelius. Another link in this
aristocratic colonial network had been forged two years before the death of
Domitius Tullus. Hadrian's niece Julia Paulina had married Pedanius Fuscus
Salinator, scion of a family from Barcino (Barcelona) that had been at the
summit of Roman society for three generations. Young Fuscus was an admiring
disciple of Pliny, who congratulated Servianus on his choice of son-in-law, 'who
will prove better than your fondest hopes could wish - it only remains for him
to give you grandchildren like himself as soon as possible.' Julia Paulina may
have had children soon after her marriage. But only the son born in April 113,
Hadrian's grand-nephew, would survive.16
How aware of provincial origins Roman society was in the case of these high-
ranking persons is a question. For senators like Pliny, himself from the remotest
corner of Italy, more important was the fact that the Emperor was 'one of us'.
True, he had been loaded with adulation, and was constantly encouraged to take
the title Optimus, best of emperors; and he had made not only his wife but
even his sister an Augusta. But Trajan was able to maintain his image as a civilis
princeps, a citizen prince. It was no doubt not mere coincidence that Trajan had
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as his seal a figure of Marsyas, which he presumably acquired from the family
of his mother, the Marcii: it was a potent symbol of freedom for the Romans.
Otherwise, Trajan was content to cultivate the image of a bluff military man,
one of those Romans who 'looked stupid and were believed honest'. As he rode
in his triumphal chariot through the streets of Rome, he had the Greek sage Dio
of Prusa with him, so Philostratus records. 'I have no idea what you are talking
about', the Emperor told the sage, 'but I love you as myself As for the provin-
cial origin, he had taken steps to deal with any residual resentments from Italian
senators by implementing what Nerva had begun, the state-supported welfare
scheme (alimentd) for poor children, confined to Italy, and obliging senators
from the provinces to invest at least a third of their capital in Italian land. 17
Besides all this, his popularity was guaranteed by the vast riches won in
Dacia. They made possible a programme of public building on a scale not seen
since the time of Augustus - notwithstanding the massive building in Rome
undertaken by the Flavian dynasty. Rome itself now began to acquire a real
city centre for the first time, the Forum Ulpium, dwarfing the existing Fora.
Trajan also constructed a new harbour for the capital, to replace that of Ostia.
Hadrian took an active interest in this activity. But, Dio reports, when he
interrupted a discussion between Trajan and his master-architect Apollodorus,
the latter curtly advised him to stick to his still-life drawing. Hadrian never
forgot this slight. 18
After a year or two in Rome - there is no other evidence of how he occupied
himself in this period - it must be supposed that Hadrian felt restless. He may
have hoped for a consular appointment from Trajan, and none was forthcoming,
let alone adoption and the role of Caesar. The city may have begun to seem
unattractive to him. There were, it is true, various forms of entertainment avail-
able. But Hadrian may have been bored by dinner parties with mimes and
clowns and dancing catamites laid on to divert the guests, even if not disgusted,
as was Pliny's earnest friend the rhetoric teacher Julius Genitor. There were also
intellectual occasions. Tacitus may have been holding public readings of his
Histories of the Flavian period. Pliny had reacted with enthusiasm when he had
been invited to read parts of the work, and prophesied that it would become
immortal. Whether Tacitus was the unnamed author to whom Pliny refers in
another letter is uncertain: he had never been 'more conscious of the powers
of history, its dignity, its majesty, its divine inspiration' than at a recent public
reading. The author had left part to be read on another day and afterwards was
begged not to proceed. 'Such is the shame that people feel at hearing about their
conduct. The author complied' - but: 'the book remains and will remain and
will always be read.' This would fit well with Tacitus' account of the Flavian
period. Whether Hadrian would have found anything of much interest in such
work, or in other literary novelties, such as Caninius Rufus' poem on the Dacian
wars or readings by Titinius Capito 'on the deaths of famous men', or Pliny's
published speeches, is another matter. He probably spent time hunting, perhaps
with Trajan, now that the Emperor had made this an acceptable pursuit for the
56
THE YOUNG GENERAL
elite. He could have been building on his own country estate - at Tibur, one
assumes. But he clearly wanted something different. 19
Friends of his, above all Sosius Senecio, and contemporaries, such as Minicius
Fundanus, now a fellow- Vllvir of Hadrian's, had strong links with Greece. But
he had never been there (so far as is known). At about the time of Hadrian's
consulship Pliny found an excuse to write to his young friend Valerius Maximus,
who had been appointed to a mission in the province of Achaia, as 'corrector of
the free cities'. He told him to remember that
you have been s e n t . . . to the pure and genuine Greece, where civilisation
and literature, and agriculture, too, are believed to have originated; and
you have been sent to set in order the constitution of free cities . . . to free
men who are both men and free in the fullest sense . . . Respect the gods
their founders . . . pay regard to their antiquity, their heroic deeds, and the
legends of the past. . . always bear in mind that it is Athens you go to and
Sparta that you rule. 20
Hadrian would not need the encouragement of Pliny, who is not known ever
to have been to Greece, whereas the recipient of his sententious advice,
Quinctilius Valerius Maximus, was from the colony of Alexandria Troas and thus
certainly familiar with the Greek world. Greece was a magnet for all educated
Romans and for a philhellene like Hadrian his lack of office provided an ideal
chance to go there at last. His presence at Athens is not firmly attested until the
year 112, but it is plausible to suppose that he sought permission from Trajan to
leave Rome for a visit to Greece some time before. It may be that he was invited
to stay at Athens, for example by one of the suffect consuls of 109, C. Julius
Antiochus Epiphanes Philopappus, 'King Philopappus'. This man was a long-
time resident at Athens, but must have been at Rome to hold his consulship. In
any case, from about 109 onwards Trajan himself was evidently turning his eyes
eastwards. For one thing, the Parthian empire was in turmoil, with two, if not
three, rival claimants to the throne. Trajan's appointment of the corrector
Maximus is only one small sign. A further new mission was being planned, for
Pliny, which he would take up in 110: imperial legate with consular power,
replacing the normal annual proconsul, in the province of Pontus-Bithynia. His
particular mandate was to restore the finances of the cities. Trajan's reasons for
concern with the state of this province may have had wide-reaching implications.
His thoughts were already turning to the eastern part of the empire, and it should
have suited his purposes for his kinsman to take up residence in the cultural
capital of the Hellenic east.21
57
6
ARCHON AT ATHENS
The route to Athens meant a journey south along the Via Appia, then across to
Beneventum and on to Brundisium (Brindisi). From 109 or 110 onwards major
road-building was under way, on a Via Nova Traiana to the great south-eastern
port. The man in charge of the project was Pompeius Falco, now married to Sosia
Polla, daughter of Hadrians friend Senecio (probably not Falco's first wife).
Hadrian, it may be guessed, will have called on Falco in the course of his journey.
Whether he had much company for this trip is a matter of guesswork. He pre-
sumably took Sabina with him, and a considerable household. Some like-minded
friends may have joined him. But of known friends, his contemporaries who were
senators, Platorius Nepos and Aemilius Papus, were probably pursuing their
careers, being a stage or two behind Hadrian in the cursus honorum. His two
equestrian friends were probably also both holding orifice, Claudius Livianus as
Guard Prefect - with Hadrians former guardian Acilius Attianus by now his
colleague, it may be conjectured - and Marcius Turbo as a tribune in the Rome
garrison and then as procurator of the main gladiatorial training-school. For his
stay at Athens and for stops on the way, he had no doubt made arrangements
about accommodation in advance. Sosius Senecio would have been well placed to
give advice and introductions, and at Athens itself Hadrian probably had a host
who had invited him. 1
A standard destination from Brundisium was Dyrrachium (Diirres) in Epirus,
from which the traveller for the east could join the Via Egnatia. Anyone heading
for Athens would sail for a more southerly port, such as Buthrotum, and then
coast down into the Corinthian Gulf. There is good reason to suppose that
Hadrian made for Nicopolis, on the peninsula opposite Actium, at the mouth
of the Gulf of Ambracia - the city had been founded by Augustus to com-
memorate the victory of 31 BC - and stayed there for some time. Nicopolis had
become famous in the time of Trajan as the home of the philosopher Epictetus.
The lame Phrygian had once been a slave at Rome, belonging to an imperial
freedman, Epaphroditus. He had become a pupil of the Roman Stoic Musonius
Rufus, and had been banished, along with other philosophers, under an edict of
Domitian - probably a sequel to the trials and executions of Stoic senators in
late 93. He settled at Nicopolis and chose to remain in spite of Domitian's death.
58
ATH
10
? ° 200
Map 2 Athens
ARCHON AT ATHENS
It had become a place of pilgrimage for seekers after truth, who came to sit at
the feet of Epictetus. The HA registers Epictetus as one of only two named
philosophers with whom Hadrian was on particularly close terms. It is difficult
to avoid the conclusion that the friendship with Epictetus was formed when
Hadrian was on his way to Athens for the first time, in about the year 110 or
111.2
Epictetus wrote nothing, but one of his admirers who was at Nicopolis in
these years made copious notes of the master's discourses, or his dialogues with
pupils and various visitors, some of them eminent persons; they were only
published long afterwards. The author, or compiler, was then a young man,
from Bithynian Nicomedia (Izmit), a Roman citizen of the rank of knight, L.
Flavius Arrianus. Some of the conversations at Nicopolis which he transcribed
may even include ones at which Hadrian was present. Further, a passing refer-
ence by Epictetus may give a hint of where Hadrian stayed at Nicopolis - 'at the
house of Quadratus', where Epictetus evidently held forth from time to time.
The name is not particularly uncommon and there might have been a local wor-
thy called Quadratus. But it could have been Julius Quadratus the consul of 94
who, it was suggested, may have nominated Hadrian to be his Prefect during
the Latin Festival, and perhaps also for membership of the Vllviri epulonum in
about the year 100. Quadratus was in high favour with Trajan. He had been
governor of Syria for a few years, consul a second time, as ordinarius, in 105,
and at this time was probably completing a year as proconsul of Asia. He could
even have been spending some time at Nicopolis on his way back from Asia to
Rome. Epictetus comments that 'if some man who has been consul twice hears
this [the notion that no bad man can be truly free], he will agree with you if
you add - "but you are a wise man, this does not apply to you.'" There were, it
is true, at least seven persons still alive in the middle years of Trajan who had
been consul twice - Servianus, Laberius Maximus, Suburanus, Quadratus and
his colleague Julius Candidus, Senecio and Cornelius Palma.3
Epictetus was a Stoic, although he spoke with sympathy of the Cynics and,
like them, thought nothing of birth or rank. Apart from the sarcastic remarks
directed at a man twice consul (whether present or not), there were plenty of
cutting comments directed at other eminent persons. A man destined to receive
high equestrian office - as Prefect of the annona —was handled by Epictetus with
justifiable scepticism when he claimed to lack ambition. The corrector Maximus,
who was an Epicurean, received quite a grilling when 'he sailed all the way to
Cassiope during the winter' to visit Epictetus. 'I sit as judge over the Hellenes',
said Maximus, but this did not impress Epictetus. The procurator-governor of
Epirus, the little province to which Nicopolis belonged, probably a man named
Cn. Cornelius Pulcher from Epidaurus in the Peloponnese, got no sympathy
when he complained about being insulted by the people for his ostentatious
support of a comic actor. Epictetus is repeatedly quoted as expatiating on the
worthlessness of seeking imperial preferment. These attitudes may well have
been attractive to Hadrian. Two passages in Arrian's Discourses of Epictetus look
60
ARCHON AT ATHENS
as if they could have been directed at Hadrian himself. To be a son of God or a
citizen of the universe was what counted, Epictetus said. 'Shall kinship with
Caesar or with any other powerful persons at Rome be enough to enable men
to live in security, immune from contempt and fearing nothing?' W h o else other
than Hadrian could claim kinship with the Emperor at this time? Even closer to
Hadrian is another remark. No one could think ill of himself if he regarded
himself as begotten of God. 'But - if Caesar adopts you, no one will be able to
endure your conceit.' Irrespective of the story in the HA that Hadrian had
learned, when consul in 108, that he would be adopted by Trajan - which could
have become widely known, even if not made public - many must have looked
on him as the heir apparent. 4
Epictetus and his pupils may have become weary of Dacian war bores.
Someone had evidently complained about his host 'telling every day how he
fought in Moesia . . . how he climbed up to the crest of the hill, how he began
to be besieged again.' Epictetus dismissed the war as having come about through
ignorance, just like the Persian or Peloponnesian - or Trojan - wars. It was all
very well, for 'the profound peace that Caesar now seems to provide - no wars
any more, no battles, no large-scale brigandage: we can travel by land at any
hour, we can sail from sunrise to sunset.' Yet Caesar could not provide 'peace
from fever, from shipwreck, fire, earthquake, lightning . . . or from love, sorry,
or envy'. True peace could only come from God. 5
In a discourse on providence and the gifts of nature, Epictetus had occasion
to mention facial hair. At first sight, 'can there be anything more useless than
the hairs on a chin?' But the beard is nature's way of distinguishing men and
women: 'we should preserve the signs that God has given; we should not throw
them away and confuse the sexes.' Shaving had been the norm in Roman society
for several hundred years, but traditionally minded Greeks - after a brief period
when Alexander set the fashion for shaving - stuck to their beards. Dio of Prusa
registers his satisfaction at having seen in Olbia, a remote Black Sea outpost of
Hellenism on the River Borysthenes (Dnieper), only one man who was clean-
shaven. This was to curry favour with the Romans - and he was looked down
on by his fellow-citizens. As emperor Hadrian is regularly shown bearded - not
with the flowing beard of the philosopher, but with the traditional well-tended
beard of the Greeks. He might of course have stopped shaving some years before.
But it is a plausible conjecture that his visit to Greece, when he was in his mid-
thirties, was decisive, that it made him wish to look like a Greek, whether or not
Epictetus' comments had a direct influence. The HA has another explanation
for Hadrian's beard: he grew it 'to conceal facial blemishes'. 6
While Arrian was a pupil of Epictetus at Nicopolis he certainly took the
opportunity to visit the surrounding areas. In his other writings he reveals
familiarity with Ambracia and Amphilochia, and gives details of how one sails
between Acarnania, south of Nicopolis, and the island of Leucas. Given his
passion for hunting, Arrian is likely to have spent time in this pursuit as well. It
is at least plausible to imagine Hadrian joining him. Arrian was also at Delphi.
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By the time he went there, he had probably ended his studies with Epictetus.
An inscription shows Arrian as a member of the advisory council of a high
Roman official settling boundary disputes between Delphi and her neighbours.
This was Avidius Nigrinus, who probably came to Greece as imperial legate with
a special mission soon after his consulship in the first half of 110. Nigrinus, it
has been suggested, was appointed after the corrector Maximus had completed
his tour of duty - the fact that Trajan found it necessary to send a second special
commissioner, this time a consular, must be taken as a sign of concern for the
state of Greece. Nigrinus may even have replaced the normal annual proconsul,
as Pliny had just done in Pontus-Bithynia. Nigrinus was particularly well
equipped for the task. His father of the same names and his uncle Avidius
Quietus had strong links with Greece, and had been friends of Plutarch. 7
Hadrians older friend Sosius Senecio was also closely linked to Plutarch.
Senecio had probably met him many years before, when serving as quaestor in
Achaia. The friendship lasted and was cemented at Rome. Plutarch dedicated to
Senecio one of his most substantial works, the nine books of Table Talk, in
which he recalls their conversations in Greece, at Athens and Patras, and at
Chaeronea, Plutarch's home in Boeotia, where Senecio had attended the wedding
of Plutarch's son, as well as at Rome. At least several pairs of the Parallel Lives
of great Greeks and Romans, Plutarch's other major work, on which he was still
engaged at this time, were also dedicated to Senecio, as was his essay On Making
Progress in Virtue. Another Roman friend of Plutarch who must have been well
known to Hadrian was Minicius Fundanus of Ticinum (Pavia), who was on close
terms with Pliny and was a fellow- Vllvir of Hadrian's. Much of Plutarch's life
was centred on Delphi, where he held an important priesthood of Apollo. It is
plausible enough to suppose that Hadrian visited Delphi on his way to Athens,
but whether it was there or elsewhere, he surely made the acquaintance of
Plutarch during this stay in Greece. 8
At Athens Hadrian had, no doubt, ample opportunity for dinner parties with
witty, literary, or philosophical conversation of the kind that Senecio obviously so
much relished. At least one of the guests at an Athenian party immortalised in the
Table Talk was still at Athens, 'King Philopappus', as Plutarch calls him, by his
full names C. Julius Antiochus Epiphanes Philopappus. He was a grandson of the
last king of Commagene, Antiochus IV, deposed by Vespasian in 72. Antiochus'
sons and this grandson (whose last name mean 'lover of his grandfather') still
retained the royal title. Philopappus had taken up residence at Athens, of which
he had become a citizen, holding office as archon and becoming a lavish bene-
factor. What is more, Philopappus had become a Roman senator and was even
consul suffect in the year 109. It had been a nice gesture to confer the fasces on
this man at precisely this moment: it was almost the three-hundredth anniversary
of the battle of Thermopylae, at which his ancestor Antiochus the Great had been
defeated by the consul M'. Acilius Glabrio. The consul Antiochus Epiphanes
marked a symbolic coming together of the western and eastern elites. As has been
suggested, Hadrian could easily have got to know Philopappus at Rome in the
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summer of 109, and could well have been invited to stay with him at Athens. Be
this as it may, it would have been difficult for a high-ranking Roman visitor to
Athens in these years not to come into contact with the king. His sister Balbilla
turns up many years later as a close friend of Hadrian s wife Sabina. It is a fair bet
that their friendship began, if not in 109, then at the latest about the year 111,
when Hadrian - surely with his wife - first came to Athens. 9
Other prominent persons likely to have entertained Hadrian or to have made
his acquaintance include the young Spartan notable who was a cousin of
Philopappus and Balbilla, C. Julius Eurycles Herculanus. Plutarch dedicated an
essay to Herculanus, On the Art of Self-Praise Without Incurring Disapproval.
Most of the piece is devoted to historical examples from Greek history, but
towards the end comes some practical advice. Boasting about one's success, some
'act or word that found favour with the governor', should be avoided. After
attending gubernatorial banquets, people should refrain from recounting
'gracious remarks illustrious or royal persons have addressed to them'. One can
readily imagine Herculanus at dinner with the imperial legate Nigrinus - who
was also active at Athens - and Hadrian among the other guests. 10
Herculanus, 'thirty-sixth in descent from the Dioscuri' and a member of a
family, the Euryclids, that had dominated Sparta since the time of Augustus, was
related not only to King Philopappus but to the leading family of Athens, that
of Ti. Claudius Atticus Herodes. Atticus claimed descent from Miltiades and
Cimon, and indeed from the legendary hero Aeacus. The family was immensely
rich, Atticus' father Hipparchus having managed to secrete a large part of his
fortune when on trial under the Flavians. Atticus 'discovered' the treasure after
Nerva's accession, and was permitted to take possession. This enabled him to
play the role of benefactor on the grand scale, and he seems to have acquired
honorary senatorial rank under Trajan. But neither Atticus nor Herculanus, even
though their families had enjoyed Roman citizenship since the Julio-Claudian
period, nor indeed any other Greeks from 'old Greece' (the province Achaia and
the 'free cities' such as Athens that were, at least in theory, enclaves within the
province) had become Roman senators. The consul 'King' Philopappus was only
an honorary Athenian. Greeks from Asia Minor had entered the Senate, in some
numbers, a few even rising to the consulship, under the Flavians, and Trajan had
given high command to men like the Pergamenes Quadratus and Quadratus
Bassus. It must be supposed that Athenians and Spartans still felt a certain
reserve and declined to seek senatorial rank. For one thing, they may not have
been good enough at Latin. It was doubtless to give his young son a good
grounding in this respect that Atticus arranged for the boy, aged about eleven or
twelve at this time, to stay at Rome in the house of Calvisius Tullus Ruso, the
son-in-law of old Domitius Tullus. 11
Hadrian liked Athens, of that there can be no doubt. His repeated visits there
when Emperor make this clear. To see the Acropolis and the Parthenon and
other famous monuments was in itself an aspiration shared by most cultivated
persons in this age. Hadrian may have been particularly struck by the vast
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Temple of Olympian Zeus, inaugurated over 600 years earlier by Pisistratus, but
never completed. Antiochus Epiphanes, the Seleucid king whose names
Philopappus bore, had spent large sums to take the work further, but it was still
not finished. Athens, in turn, liked Hadrian. He was invited to become an
Athenian citizen, and, when the offer was accepted, was made a member of the
deme Besa. King Philopappus was enrolled in the same deme, and one may
suppose that he played a part. Hadrian was then elected archon eponymus - in
other words, was to hold the ancient chief magistracy, and the Athenian year
would take his name. His own freedman, the learned Phlegon of Tralles, who
was probably already with him, would later write a chronicle in which his
patrons archonship is registered for the year 112. As the Athenian year began
and ended in the summer, it is not certain whether his term of office began in
111 or 112. However this may be, it was a striking gesture. 'The Boule of the
Areopagus, the Boule of the Six Hundred and the Demos of the Athenians'
honoured 'their archon Hadrianos' with a statue in the Theatre of Dionysus.
They took care to preface this simple three-line inscription on the base with
seven lines in Latin setting out their archon's career as a Roman senator. A few
other Romans of his rank had accepted this honour, but only a few. One was a
man called Trebellius Rufus, from Tolosa (Toulouse), who had evidently settled
at Athens and ceased to pursue the senatorial career. Under Domitian the great
Vibius Crispus, three times consul, had accepted enrolment in the deme
Marathon and the archonship - but in absentia. And Domitian himself, whose
patron goddess was the Roman version of Athena, had likewise consented to be
archon without coming to Athens. 12
An eminent senior senator, on his way to become proconsul of Asia, may have
passed through Athens in the spring of the year 112, or a year later, on his way
back, and witnessed the Roman archon carrying out his duties - Cornelius
Tacitus. His Histories complete, Tacitus may now have been beginning his
research for a new work - not the sequel that he had promised, the reigns of
Nerva and Trajan, but the Annals of the Julio-Claudian emperors, from Tiberius
to Nero. Athens is mentioned only briefly in the surviving books. Tacitus related
the visit in AD 18 of Germanicus Caesar who went from Nicopolis to the
ancient allied city, where the 'Greeks received him with elaborate honours,
expatiating on their own history and literature to make their flattery seem more
dignified.' (The visit shortly after by the Caesar's enemy Piso, who was harshly
critical of the Athenians, is also described.) Hadrian was not yet a Caesar like
Germanicus, and the Athenians, however delighted with so eminent an archon,
may not have displayed such elaborate flattery to him. All the same, the position
of Hadrian's wife Sabina, already unusually distinguished, became even more
special in the summer of 112. Her grandmother, Trajan's sister Marciana
Augusta, died at the end of August and was promptly deified; on the same day
her daughter Matidia, Sabina's mother, was named Augusta. Sabina was thus
daughter of an Augusta and granddaughter of a Diva. 13
The year 112 had already been marked at Rome by the formal opening on
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1 January of Trajan's colossal new Forum and Basilica and adjacent market. To
show the extent of the excavation that had been required, a mighty column was
to be erected, completed and dedicated in May of the following year. The simple
inscription proclaimed that the work had been paid for ex manubiis, 'from the
booty'. Whether the column was already decorated with reliefs commemorating
in visual form the two Dacian wars which had made all this possible, must
remain uncertain. 14
In the course of 113, developments in the east took a turn which gave Trajan
the opportunity he had clearly been waiting for. Rome's only serious rival,
Parthia, had been seriously split for some years between rival kings, Pacorus,
Vologaeses and Chosroes. This alone provided an excellent opportunity for the
settling of old scores. There was even a more recent provocation. Not long
before, Pliny had informed Trajan that a man called Callidromus had turned up
at Nicomedia: apparently a slave of Laberius Maximus, he had been captured by
Decebalus - presumably in 101 or 102 - and sent as a gift to King Pacorus. If the
story of Callidromus were true - Pliny in turn sent the man to the Emperor - it
suggested an attempt had been made by Decebalus to enlist Parthian support.
Pacorus had been king for a long time, over thirty years, but in comparison with
his rivals Vologaeses and Chosroes was now a spent force. Chosroes, for the time
being the most powerful contender, now took a step which could be construed as
an infringement of the agreement reached fifty years before. It had been estab-
lished that the king of Armenia had to be nominated by Rome, even if he were a
member of the Parthian royal house. Chosroes simply deposed the incumbent,
Axidares, son of Pacorus, and installed a successor, Parthamasiris, also a son of
Pacorus, without reference to Trajan. Axidares may have resisted, and have
appealed to Rome. Threatening missives were sent and Trajan began preparations
for war. As a young man serving under his father in Syria, forty years earlier, he
had had the chance of fighting the Parthians; but peace had then been preserved.
Now he could hope to win new glory, in the footsteps of Alexander the
Great with whom flatterers had been comparing him. Troop reinforcements on a
massive scale were set in motion for the eastern frontier provinces, to proceed
down the Danube, through Pontus-Bithynia and Galatia and on towards the
Euphrates. The Emperor himself, with his court - including Plotina and
Matidia, the two Augustae - set off from Rome at the end of October. The day
of his profectio, no doubt deliberately chosen as propitious, was the sixteenth
anniversary of his adoption by Nerva. He travelled by the Via Appia and his own
new road, the Via Traiana, just completed the previous year, to Brundisium, then
headed for Athens. The Misenum fleet under the command of its new prefect,
Marcius Turbo, and no doubt a great flotilla of merchantmen, would then
convey the Imperator, his staff, his household and his entourage. 15
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THE PARTHIAN WAR
Trajan's stay at Athens was no doubt relatively brief, just long enough to enable
the sixty-year-old Emperor to refresh himself after the sea crossing, and to
make further dispositions and appointments. Ambassadors from King
Chosroes were awaiting him. They 'asked for peace and proffered gifts', Dio
records, Tor when he heard of Trajan's departure, the king was terrified, since
Trajan's practice was to make good his threats. So he humbled his pride and
begged Trajan not to make war on him. Further, he requested that Armenia
be awarded to Parthamisiris. He had deposed Axidares, he wrote, because he
had been unsatisfactory to both Romans and Parthians.' Trajan made no
formal reply, either in writing or verbally, except for an ominous comment:
'Friendly relations are determined by deeds, not by words. When I reach Syria
I shall take appropriate action.'1
Arrangements had already been made for the major commands in the east.
Quadratus Bassus, who had been governing Cappadocia-Galatia for several
years, after sterling service in both Dacian wars and the governorship of Judaea
in between, was now transferred to Syria. His successor in Cappadocia was
M. Junius Homullus. Not much is known about Homullus, except that he had
been consul in 102, hence was now quite senior, and had spoken in the Senate
at the trials of the two proconsuls of Pontus-Bithynia defended by Pliny - 'with
subtlety, acuteness and elegance' in the second instance. An anecdote in the HA
suggests that the outspoken Homullus was on good terms with the Emperor:
'he told Trajan that Domitian was, indeed, a very bad man but had good friends
- whereas the ruler who entrusts the commonwealth to men of evil ways is hated
the more, for it is better to endure one bad man than many' As for Pontus-
Bithynia, Trajan's special commissioner Pliny had by now died - probably in the
course of the previous year, 112, after less than two years in office. He had been
replaced by another consular legate, Cornutus Tertullus. This province was too
important for troop movements from the Danube to the eastern front for it to
be given back to an annual proconsul.2
The new province of Arabia remained in the hands of its first governor, C.
Claudius Severus, although he had been in office since Cornelius Palma had
annexed the Nabataean kingdom in 106, and had in the meantime become
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THE PARTHIAN WAR
consul. Egypt acquired a new Prefect in 112 or 113, M. Rutilius Lupus, taking
over from Ser. Sulpicius Similis. Further afield too, new governors were in place.
Minicius Natalis became legate of Upper Pannonia. One of his legions, I
Adiutrix, left for the east, where it was commanded by Hadrians friend and
coeval Platorius Nepos. Pompeius Falco, another friend, may now have been
sent to govern Moesia Inferior. W h o was governing Moesia Superior and the
new acquisition, Dacia, is not clear. Whether Claudius Livianus was still Guard
Prefect, and if so with the Emperor, is also uncertain. He is mentioned along
with Senecio, Aemilius Papus, Platorius Nepos, Acilius Attianus and Turbo as
among Hadrian's particular friends at the time of the Parthian expedition. As a
Greek, from Lycia, Livianus would have been an appropriate choice for service
in the east, but he was no longer in office at the end of the war, when Attianus
was with Trajan as Prefect. Livianus was probably soon replaced, by Sulpicius
Similis, who may be supposed to have taken the place of Attianus at Rome when
the latter joined Trajan in the east.3
An impressive galaxy of senior men no doubt accompanied the Emperor as
his comites, perhaps including Cornelius Palma and Publilius Celsus, the two
men most recently honoured with a second consulship, the former in 109, the
latter this very year. These two, and Senecio, had been singled out by the public
erection of statues, Dio mentions, 'so greatly did he esteem them above the rest.'
Senecio s services in the Dacian wars and Palma s successful annexation of Arabia
are well attested. The reasons for Celsus' distinction remain obscure. The HA
biographer names all three in connection with Hadrian at this time, Senecio as
one of his close friends, Palma and Celsus as his enemies. Of the other men
given a second consulship by Trajan, one had fallen into disfavour: Laberius
Maximus, who had played a major role in the first Dacian war, had been
suspected of treasonable designs and sent into exile on an island. Nonetheless,
his son-in-law, Bruttius Praesens, after some years out of public life - for which
withdrawal Pliny had gently chided him - was given a command as legate of
one of the Syrian legions, VI Ferrata. Laberius was one of only two senators
known to have suffered banishment under Trajan, the other being the blue-
blooded aristocrat Calpurnius Crassus: he had already been suspected of
planning a coup against Nerva, and had allegedly tried it again under Trajan; he
too was confined to an island. 4
Others who were to hold important commands included two recent consuls,
Julius Maximus Manlianus, Hadrian's successor as legate of Pannonia Inferior,
and Catilius Severus, a friend of Pliny and a recently elected colleague of
Hadrian in the VHviri epulonum. Catilius, a 'colonial', but not from the west
- his home was the Bithynian colonia Apamea - had, it seems, now married
Dasumia Polla, the wealthy widow of Domitius Tullus, an advantageous
connection. The Dasumii of Corduba were related to Hadrian. Of the other
commanders, Lusius Quietus, the formidable North African chieftain who had
done signal service against the Dacians, was back again with Trajan in command
of his Moorish auxiliaries. As for Hadrian himself, the influence of Plotina, so
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THE PARTHIAN WAR
the HA claims, secured him appointment on Trajan's staff, as legatus 'at the time
of the Parthian expedition' - presumably as legatus Augusti pro praetore and comes
of the Emperor.5
The imperial party must have left Athens well before the end of the year.
Trajan's route, briefly registered by Dio, took him through the provinces of Asia
and Lycia. From there he took ship to the main harbour of Syria, Seleucia in
Pieria, close to the mouth of the River Orontes, which he reached in December,
according to the Byzantine chronicler John Malalas. The same Malalas, whose
history is focused on Antioch, notes Hadrian's presence: Trajan 'set out with a
large force of soldiers and senators and sailed for the east. Among the senators was
Hadrian, his relative by marriage through his sister.' From there, via the pleasant
garden settlement of Daphne, Trajan reached Antioch, again according to
Malalas, on 7 January 114. The information is plausible enough, except that it
is preceded by a detailed account of an alleged 'Persian' capture of Antioch,
liberated by the Antiochenes themselves, following Trajan's instructions.
Although Malalas has some convincing enough details, the presence in his
narrative of fantasies of this kind makes it dangerous to prefer him to other
sources. But the alternative and superior account, written by Arrian - the last part
of his Parthian History — survives only in fragments, and Cassius Dio, who used
Arrian's work, is likewise not preserved in full. Xiphilinus' summary of Dio,
supplemented by some excerpts from Dio's full text, provides only an outline. As
a result, the chronology of Trajan's war remains uncertain in several important
respects.6
During the early part of the year, while Roman forces assembled, or perhaps,
indeed, shortly after landing in Syria, Trajan made a dedication from the spoils
of Dacia to Zeus Casius, the god of the mountain near the mouth of the
Orontes. A verse inscription accompanied the gift, composed - according to
Arrian, who quotes part of it, and the Palatine Anthology in which the full text
is preserved - by Hadrian on his behalf: 'Trajan, descendant of Aeneas, to Casian
Zeus, the ruler on earth to the ruler above, makes offering from the plunder of
the Getae.' Further spoils, from the Arsacid rulers of Parthia, were promised, if
Zeus vouchsafed another victory. Trajan is also supposed to have consulted the
oracle of Jupiter of Heliopolis (Baalbek), to enquire whether he would return to
Rome when the war was over: the answer, supplied by an elaborate rigmarole,
was negative.7
Trajan had to deal with Armenia. Antioch was not the most promising place
from which to launch an expedition in that direction. He had presumably
decided to avoid crossing Anatolia in the winter, but, in any case, at Antioch he
was better placed to assess the situation and inform himself about the position
in the Parthian empire as a whole and Mesopotamia in particular. Just across
the Euphrates, the little kingdom of Osrhoene was in the hands of a native
ruler again, Abgarus, who had apparently purchased it from Pacorus a few years
before - the latest trace of the old king in the written sources, although coins
were still struck for him as late as 115-16. Abgarus sent gifts and a message of
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THE PARTHIAN WAR
friendship on Trajan's arrival at Antioch', Dio reported, 'but did not appear in
person. He was afraid of Trajan and the Parthians alike and was trying to stay
neutral. For that reason he would not come to confer with the Emperor.'8
Trajan's objective in 114 was Satala, north of the upper Euphrates, in Lesser
Armenia, which had been part of the empire for over fifty years. Here the rein-
forcements from the Danube provinces were assembled. It was a long march by
any standards, some 475 miles (760 km) through difficult country, and must
have taken at least seven weeks. On the way he registered an early success:
whether led by Trajan in person or by one of the senior commanders, a Roman
force crossed the Euphrates beyond Melitene, entered 'enemy' territory, and
captured Arsamosata on the River Arsanias (Murat su), an eastern tributary of
the Euphrates. This was one of the four principal cities of the Armenian king-
dom. At Satala Trajan held court, a kind of durbar: 'the satraps and princes
came to meet him with gifts, one of which was a horse that had been taught to
do obeisance, kneeling on its forelegs and placing its head beneath the feet of
whoever stood near', Dio's account reports. Two fourth-century chroniclers,
Eutropius and Festus, list some of the kings who did homage: the Iberi from the
Caucasus, the Colchi, Bosporani and Sauromatae. Amazaspus, a kinsman of the
Iberian king, took service in the Roman forces. As for the eastern neighbours
of the Iberi, the Albani, Trajan appointed a new ruler. Anchialus of the Heniochi
and Machelones and Julianus of the Apsilae are also known to have been con-
firmed in their little kingdoms by Trajan. The ceremony at which 'kingdoms
were assigned' - regna adsignata - was duly celebrated on the imperial coinage.
Three men in short tunic and trousers are portrayed standing before Trajan,
wearing his breastplate and seated on a tribunal, with the Guard Prefect and a
lictor at his side. He extends his right hand to the barbarian in the foreground
who raises both arms in salute.9
But the new Parthian nominee to the throne of Greater Armenia,
Parthamasiris, whose installation had provided Trajan with the casus belli, did
not appear. 'He wrote to Trajan, calling himself king.' As Trajan declined to
reply, he wrote again, dropping the royal title, requesting that the governor of
Cappadocia, Homullus, be sent to him. Instead, Trajan sent Homullus' son,
serving under his father as tribunus laticlavius. From Satala Trajan now moved
eastwards to Elegia, where Parthamasiris arrived, to be received by Trajan before
the Emperor's tribunal. The king 'saluted Trajan, removed his crown and laid it
at Trajan's feet, expecting to be given it back. But the assembled troops now
loudly acclaimed Trajan as imperator, the traditional sign of a victory.
Parthamasiris, terrified, took it as an insult and a sign of his impending doom.
He turned as if to flee but was surrounded; he begged for a private audience
with Trajan, but was rebuffed. In rage, he left the camp, but was ordered back
by Trajan. Before the army Trajan told the king to say what he wanted in the
hearing of all. Parthamasiris 'declared that he came not because he had been
defeated but of his own free will. He believed that he should not be treated
wrongfully but should receive back his kingdom, as Tiridates had from Nero.'
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THE PARTHIAN WAR
Trajan replied that 'he would surrender Armenia to no one: it belonged to the
Romans and would have a Roman governor.' Parthamasiris' Armenian courtiers
were obliged to stay - they were now Roman subjects. He himself was allowed
to leave, with his Parthian companions and an escort of Roman cavalry. The
humiliation of the Parthian king of Armenia was depicted on several coin issues,
with the legend rex Parthusr. the Parthian is shown, knees bending and both
hands outstretched as he approaches Trajan. However, the sequel was something
of a blot on Trajan's reputation: on his journey - presumably back to Parthia -
the deposed monarch was killed, in unknown circumstances.10
There was some fighting to be done. Bruttius Praesens, legate of VI Ferrata,
was faced with snow 16 feet deep in the mountains east of Lake Van. Native
guides supplied his men with snowshoes. The experience may have been too
much for Praesens - at least, his a/?mf-inscription registers as his next post the
curatorship of the Via Latina, perhaps a kind of paid leave. But he was back in
the east before the war ended. The exploit with snowshoes is recorded by a
fragment of Arrian's Parthica, in which Trajan's war was treated at some length.
It might well be that Arrian had been able to obtain a commission as an
equestrian officer and had been with the army in Armenia in 114. Otherwise,
Lusius Quietus, so an admittedly late source claims, campaigned against the
Mardi east of Lake Van. Several other kings were 'won over', some submitting
of their own accord, which meant that they were treated as 'friends' by Trajan,
others without a battle. Greater Armenia was organised as a Roman province
- or, rather, perhaps, added on to Cappadocia, from which Galatia was now
detached. Catilius Severus may already have been installed as legate of
Cappadocia-Armenia Maior before the end of 114. A procurator of Armenia
Maior is also attested, T. Haterius Nepos. The new conquest inspired the Senate
to bring about what had long been proposed: Trajan was officially to be called
Optimus — 'the best'. The Emperor had lived up to his reputation, marching on
foot with the men throughout the entire campaign, fording rivers with them,
sometimes even deliberately sending out false reports of impending enemy
attack to keep the soldiers up to the mark.11
The war was far from finished, however. To annexe Armenia meant that
Mesopotamia had to follow. Trajan and the armies moved south, and Nisibis
and Batnae were rapidly captured, which prompted the Senate to vote him -
prematurely - the title Parthicus. Trajan did not accept yet. He knew only too
well that a lot more fighting lay ahead. 'Leaving garrisons at opportune points,
he went to to Edessa, and there saw Abgarus for the first time.' Abgarus could
no longer stay neutral:
Partly through fear of Trajan and partly through the persuasion of his son
Arbandes, a handsome youth who was in favour with Trajan, he came to
meet Trajan on the road, made his apologies and obtained pardon - for
he had a powerful intercessor in the boy. He therefore become Trajan's
friend and entertained him at a banquet, and during the dinner brought
in his son to perform a barbarian dance.
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Trajan was very taken with the boy, who wore gold earrings: 'I blame you for
not coming to me and joining in my expedition and sharing in the hard work
- for this reason I would gladly tear off one of your earrings!', he told Arbandes.
Other Parthian vassals were less compliant, particularly a certain Mannus, and
the ruler of Adiabene, Mebarsapes. 12
Trajan returned to Antioch for the winter. Early in the new year, disaster
struck: Antioch was hit by a violent earthquake. Vast numbers perished, the
most prominent victim being one of the consules ordinarii of 115, M. Pedo
Vergilianus, who must have been holding office in absentia. Trajan himself
escaped out of a window with only minor injuries, 'led out by some being of
superhuman stature', according to Dio. As the aftershocks continued for several
days, he remained out of doors, in the city's hippodrome. Nothing is reported
about how Plotina managed, or other members of the imperial household -
except that Malalas specifically mentions that 'Hadrian, before he began to
reign, was with the Emperor Trajan, because he was his relative by marriage,
when the great city of Antiochus suffered from the wrath of God - he was then
a senator.' Malalas also reports, in connection with the earthquake, the martyr-
dom of the Bishop of Antioch, Ignatius, who 'had incurred the Emperor's anger
by abusing him.' The firm tradition in the church is that Ignatius was sent to
Rome for execution. Now whereas Xiphilinus' abbreviation of Dio supplies
a lengthy account of the disaster, Malalas, by paradox, has less detail on this
dramatic event at his native city, but supplies a precise date, Sunday 13
December, two years after Trajan's arrival in the east. However, 13 December
115 was not a Sunday. Further, Pedo the consul ordinarius of 115, who died in
the earthquake, was replaced by a suffect consul early in the year, although his
colleague continued in office for some time. Elaborate attempts have been made
to defend Malalas' date, but they create unnecessary difficulties. It is more
plausible to accept that Pedo was still in office as consul when the earthquake
struck, probably in January 115. Malalas is likely enough to have invented, or
assumed, the date of 13 December on the assumption that the earthquake was
about a week before the martyrdom of Ignatius, who he knew had died under
Trajan - and supposed had been condemned at Antioch when the Emperor was
there. The saint was commemorated at Antioch on 20 December. 13
The war had to go on: after the long account of the earthquake, D i o -
Xiphilinus proceeds with the statement that 'Trajan at the beginning of spring
hastened into the enemy's country.' The year 115 apparently saw a whole
series of battles. For one thing, Trajan received a further four imperatorial accla-
mations. The scanty nature of the sources makes it difficult to be sure where
Roman forces were engaged, and in what order. His first target was Adiabene,
the kingdom across the Tigris, 'a district of Assyria opposite Ninus [Nineveh]'.
In the winter trees had been felled in the forests around Nisibis and collapsible
boats constructed. They were taken on wagons to form a pontoon bridge over
the Tigris. After an opposed crossing, the Romans conquered the whole of
Adiabene, Dio goes on, adding that Arbela and Gaugamela, near which places
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THE PARTHIAN WAR
Alexander defeated Darius, are in this country' This historical background
may well have been in the forefront of Trajan's mind. But the Parthian king, the
contemporary equivalent of the Persian Darius, remained to be tackled. In a
separate excerpt evidently belonging to the account of this action, Lusius
Quietus is credited by Dio with capturing Singara in Mesopotamia, on the south
side of the mountain ridge beyond the River Chaboras. Mebarsapes the ruler of
Adiabene may have exercised control west of the Tigris as far as this point. 14
Presumably leaving substantial forces on the Tigris, with orders to proceed
southwards, Trajan himself now returned west, to lead an army down the
Euphrates for the attack on the Parthian capital, Ctesiphon. At Dura Europus,
an old Macedonian foundation, a triumphal arch was erected in his honour.
Further down the river, at Ozogardana, the 'tribunal of Trajan' was still to be
seen two hundred and fifty years later. In the course of the campaign, Trajan
still had the business of the empire to deal with. One item which happens to
be recorded must have come to his attention in late summer, a disturbance
at Alexandria, the Egyptian metropolis. Inter-communal rioting between the
Greeks and the substantial Jewish minority had broken out again. The animosity
between the two communities went back a long way and both sides frequently
sent delegations to Rome to seek imperial backing. Trajan had been appealed to
in this way not long before he left Italy, and had favoured the Jews, according
to an Alexandrian Greek version preserved on papyrus. The rioting had obliged
the Prefect Rutilius Lupus to intervene against the Jews. In an an edict of 13
October 115 Lupus referred to 'a battle between Romans and Jews'. The Prefect
demanded restraint from the Greeks and announced that a 'judge' had been sent
by the Emperor to examine the matter. 15
Trajan had planned to join the Euphrates to the Tigris by a canal to bring his
boats across the narrow strip of land between the rivers, but was advised against
it and had them hauled across instead. 'Then he crossed the Tigris and entered
Ctesiphon' - apparently meeting no resistance. Chosroes had fled, but Trajan
captured one of his daughters and the royal throne. It was a moment to relish.
The Parthians had inflicted defeats on Crassus and the Triumvir Antonius which
had been only partially avenged by the victory of Ventidius, the sole Roman who
had ever held a triumph de Parthis. Augustus had restored Roman prestige and
recovered the lost standards, but by diplomacy, not war. Parthia, and the bone
of contention, Armenia, had gone on presenting problems for Rome; and till
now no Roman army had ever reached the Parthian capital. 16
'When he had taken possession of Ctesiphon, he was acclaimed imperator and
confirmed the title Parthicus', Dio reports. T h e Fasti Ostienses of the year 116
supply a date: on 20 or 21 February 'laurelled despatches were sent to the Senate
by the Emperor Trajan, on account of which he was named Parthicus.' There is
much to be said for the suggestion that Trajan deliberately chose the anniver-
sary of his accession, 28 January, to enter the enemy capital - if it could be
supposed that there was time for despatches sent out on that day to reach the
Senate three and a half weeks later. The Senate voted new honours to Trajan.
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THE PARTHIAN WAR
Meanwhile circus games were held on three days. The imperial coinage went to
town, proclaiming 'the conquest of Parthia' (Parthia capta) and Armenia and
Mesopotamia subjected to the power of the Roman People'. A further new
province was now to be created: southern Mesopotamia, called Asorestan' by its
Iranian rulers, was to be the Roman province of Assyria. Trajan sailed down the
Tigris and the united stream of the two rivers in a vast imperial barge, adorned
with gold, holding 'conferences' on board, as a fragment of Arrian's Parthica
registers.17
The Emperor was able to stand at the head of the Persian Gulf, having won
over Athambelus, ruler of the little kingdom of Mesene in the Tigris island (in
the area of modern Basra). When he saw a ship sailing for India, he expressed
regret that he was too old to follow further in Alexander's footsteps to that
country. Nonetheless, he wrote to the Senate, perhaps in the despatches
reported in the Fasti Ostienses under 6 May, that he had advanced further than
Alexander had - a sophistical argument could, of course, make such a claim,
given that the Spanish Emperor could be deemed to have started from the
River Baetis. But Trajan probably meant his Armenian campaign - and he may
have counted his conquest of Dacia in the same calculation. The Senate
responded that 'he should have the honour of celebrating triumphs over as
many peoples as he pleased, since on account of the large number of peoples
which he named in his frequent despatches, they were not always able to
understand or even pronounce the names correctly.' Trajan's interest in
Alexander - an obsession, it might almost be called - was further evident when
he sacrificed to the king's shade at Babylon. But, unlike Alexander, Trajan had
failed to defeat the Great King in the field.18
While at Babylon, Trajan was informed that during his voyage to the Gulf
and back rebellion had broken out in 'all the territories previously conquered'.
What is more, in the late spring or early summer a massive Jewish uprising had
begun in three Roman provinces, Cyrenaica, Egypt and Cyprus. In Armenia,
Catilius Sever us was confronted by a Parthian named Vologaeses. Before it came
to a battle, Vologaeses obtained an armistice. Trajan made him an offer of part
of Armenia, in return for peace. Meanwhile he sent two generals against the
insurgents in Mesopotamia, Maximus and Quietus. Maximus, a man of consular
rank, perhaps the governor of Mesopotamia, was defeated and killed. Quietus,
with his Moorish cavalry, was more successful, recovering Nisibis and, after a
siege, Edessa, which was burned to the ground. The great Greek city of Seleucia
on the Tigris, close to Ctesiphon, was also sacked, by the legionary commanders
Erucius Clarus and Julius Alexander. Trajan evidently realised that his dream of
equalling Alexander's conquests was beyond attainment. At Ctesiphon a great
ceremony was held and a Parthian prince, Parthamaspates, a renegade son of
Chosroes, was crowned as king by the grace of Rome. The event was duly cele-
brated on the imperial coinage, with the Emperor placing a diadem on the head
of the kneeling vassal and the legend Rex Parthis datus, 'a king given to the
Parthians'. 19
73
THE PARTHIAN WAR
The Jewish revolt in the diaspora was now reaching alarming proportions.
In Cyrenaica, which had had a large Jewish population for several centuries, the
rebels, with a man called Andreas at their head, according to Dio - perhaps the
same as the Lukuas said by Eusebius to have been proclaimed king by the Jewish
rebels - were 'destroying both Romans and Greeks'. Dio reports horrific
atrocities allegedly committed by the insurgents and gives the number of dead
as 220,000. At Cyrene itself several temples and other public buildings were
wrecked, and even the roads leading to the city were 'torn up and broken'. From
Cyrenaica the Jewish host poured into Egypt, where their fellow-Jews rose in
their support. O n Cyprus, where Dio names the Jewish leader as Artemio, even
more were killed by the insurgents than in Cyrenaica - Dio's figure is 240,000.
Salamis, the principal city, was sacked. The timing of the revolt in the Nile valley
can be gauged from the receipts for the Jewish tax - imposed by Vespasian after
the destruction of the Temple in 70. None is dated later than 18 May 116. The
Prefect Lupus could not cope with the crisis; a legion was defeated by the Jews,
as a vivid report in a papyrus letter attests. The native Egyptian population
had to be mobilised - and fought with fierce enthusiasm, tempered by fear of
'the unholy Jews', winning a victory outside Memphis. Trajan sent in new
troops, commanded by Marcius Turbo, prefect of the Misenum fleet, which had
come to Syria for the war. Turbo campaigned himself in Egypt and Cyrenaica,
'many tens of thousands of Jews' being killed. An inscription from Berytus
(Beirut) commemorates one of the officers in Turbo's expeditionary corps, a
citizen of the colonia, who, as tribune of the Upper Moesian legion VII Claudia,
'was sent with a detachment to Cyprus on the expedition' and was decorated by
Trajan. 20
There was still a large Jewish community in Mesopotamia dating back to the
time of the Babylonian exile. According to Eusebius, 'Trajan suspected that the
Jews there would also attack . . . and ordered Lusius Quietus to clean them out
of the province. He mustered his forces and massacred a great multitude of
them.' To what extent the Jewish uprisings in Cyrenaica, Egypt and Cyprus were
coordinated with the outbreak of resistance in Mesopotamia is unclear from the
sources. The Parthian king may well have been able to stir up the Cyrenaean
Jews - who seem to have taken the initiative - to create a 'second front'. The
earthquake at Antioch may also have had an effect, and been seen by the Jews
as a sign of impending doom for the imperial power. Further, the fact that the
Jews had a king surely means that they had messianic expectations. At all events,
the diaspora revolt played a decisive part in forcing Trajan to abort his plan for
wider conquests. 21
O n his way back northwards, Trajan took personal charge of the siege of the
desert city of Hatra, which had also thrown off the Roman yoke. His forces
managed to undermine part of the city wall, but the ensuing cavalry charge was
repulsed. Even the Emperor himself was nearly wounded as he rode past. In spite
of his having 'laid aside his imperial uniform to avoid being recognised', the
enemy shot at the majestic figure and killed one of his equites singulares. The
74
THE PARTHIAN WAR
heat, the flies and the intense discomfort proved too much. 'Trajan therefore
departed, and a little later began to fail in health.'22
Trajan was still determined to restore the situation and to make another
expedition into Mesopotamia. But there was more bad news: war had broken
out in Dacia. The man chosen to deal with the situation there was Julius
Quadratus Bassus, who had been governor of Syria since the beginning of the
Parthian expedition. As Bassus' successor in Syria, Trajan appointed Hadrian. At
last Hadrian had a consular command and real responsibilities again - not that
there is much direct evidence for what he did as legate of Syria. His literary
freedman must have been with him, for in one of his books, On Marvels,
Phlegon registers a case of a woman changing sex in the year 116. It happened
at the Syrian town Laodicea on Sea - and Phlegon saw the person himself.
Another story is mentioned in passing by Ammianus Marcellinus - Hadrian
received a prophecy from the 'talking Castalian springs' at Daphne, outside
Antioch. The HAs report that Hadrian had a similar response from the shrine
of Zeus Nicephorius, although placed in the context of his early career, may,
if it is not invented, belong to his time in Syria. More to the point, the HA
has two other items to report on Hadrian's position in late 116 or early 117.
His 'enemies' Palma and Celsus fell under suspicion of plotting a coup: this was
'a guarantee' that Hadrian would be adopted. Further, he was designated to a
second consulship - as ordinarius for 118 - thanks to the influence of Plotina.
This probably took place in January 117, and 'it served to make his adoption a
foregone conclusion.' Another nomination to the consulship was much more
startling. Lusius Quietus, the Moor, was suddenly made a senator, given a suffect
consulship - some time in 117 - and installed as governor of Judaea, presum-
ably with an extra legion, given his consular rank. Trajan evidently wanted to
be sure that the Jews in their homeland did not follow the example of the
diaspora.23
There was, no doubt, widespread opposition to the idea of Hadrian becoming
Trajan's successor. Hence, presumably, 'the widespread rumours' reported by the
HA, that 'he had bribed Trajan's freedmen, had cultivated his boy favourites and
had frequent sexual relations with them when he was an inner member of the
court.' But Trajan still took no further step.
Many say [the HA reports] that he intended to die without a successor,
following the example of Alexander the Macedonian. Many also say
that he intended to advise the Senate by letter that if anything should
befall him, the Senate should give a princeps to the Roman common-
wealth, adding some names, from which it should choose the best
man.
The Emperor's illness was becoming worse; he was convinced he had been
poisoned. In fact, as Dio - who registers the alleged poisoning - records, he had
had a stroke, was partly paralysed and was suffering from dropsy. In late July
or early August 117, probably persuaded by Plotina and his beloved niece
75
THE PARTHIAN WAR
Matidia, he set off back to Rome, accompanied by the Augustae and the Guard
Prefect Attianus. At Selinus in Cilicia, the imperial party had to stop. Trajan was
too ill to go further. Hadrian remained in Syria, holding the fort, and waiting
for news.24
76
8
THE NEW RULER
Trajan's 'letter of adoption' reached Hadrian in Syria on 9 August 117. He was

now Caesar. Whether this was made public, at Antioch or otherwise, and what
took place that day or on the next, is not recorded. In the night of 10-11
August, so Dio reports, Hadrian had a dream, that 'fire came down from the
sky, which was clear and bright, striking his throat first on the left side and then
on the right, but neither frightening him nor hurting him.' On the following
day came another dispatch, announcing Trajan's decease. Hadrian would treat
11 August as his dies imperii. The news was at once communicated to the troops,
who duly acclaimed him as Imperator. A double donative was awarded - no
doubt to all the legions and to the Guard, not just to the Syrian army.1
It was not the first time that the eastern legions had raised a general to the
throne: nearly fifty years earlier Vespasian owed the power to the armies of Syria,
Judaea and Egypt. But that had been a coup d'etat, and six months had to pass
before the Danubian troops that had espoused his cause could capture Rome.
In 97, before Trajan's adoption by Nerva was announced, the governor of Syria
had probably been tempted to bid for the succession by force; but Trajan's men
quickly stifled that threat. The position in August 117 was not as desperate as
in 69, to be sure; but it was far more dangerous than in 97. Trajan was dead and
Hadrian had long been the obvious heir. But the adoption was, at best, by a
dying man and stage-managed by the Empress. Of course Hadrian could call
not only on the eastern armies but on the large contingents from Rhine and
Danube that were still in the East. But the troops were demoralised and Trajan's
death acted as a signal to Rome's enemies in every quarter. The empire was in a
state of disarray not seen since the Year of the Four Emperors. It could easily
have turned into a catastrophe.2
Besides, Hadrian had rivals and enemies, at Rome and elsewhere. A letter from
Attianus urged rapid and ruthless action. Three men were named. If the City
Prefect, Baebius Macer, seemed likely to resist confirming Hadrians nomination,
he should be killed; likewise two prominent exiles, Laberius Maximus, the dis-
gruntled former marshal, alleged to have aspired to the throne, and Crassus
Frugi, who had plotted against Nerva as well as Trajan, both languishing on
islands. What Macer could have done is far from clear. But, the HA claims, 'there
77
THE NEW RULER
was a widespread belief that Trajan had intended to make Neratius Priscus and
not Hadrian his successor - and many of his friends approved - and had actually
said to him: "I entrust the provinces to you, should anything happen to me."'
There were other stories current: 'that Trajan wanted to die without naming a
successor, like Alexander; or that he had planned to write to the Senate inviting
it to choose a Princeps for the commonwealth, in the event of his death, supply-
ing names from which the Senate should choose the best man.' Perhaps Attianus
thought Macer had actually received such a missive and might proceed on these
lines. The remark about Neratius probably went back a long way. He was to
become known as a jurist, but he had governed Pannonia at the time of the
Dacian wars, when such a statement by Trajan could plausibly have been made.
Trajan had even once given the impression that he regarded Servianus, Hadrian's
brother-in-law, as a potential successor, according to Dio. At a banquet he
invited his friends to name ten men capable of sole rule [the Latin phrase was
surely capax imperii, then, after a short pause, added - "I only need to know
nine: one I have already, Servianus".' 3
However this may be, Hadrian declined to act against the three that Attianus
had named. For one thing, Laberius' son-in-law, Bruttius Praesens, was govern-
ing Cilicia — and he was Hadrian's man. But when Crassus, descendant of more
than one great Republican house, chose to leave his island without authorisation
(so at least it was claimed), a procurator had him killed. As for Baebius Macer,
whom Pliny had once favoured with details of his polymath uncle's literary
production, nothing more is heard of him. He was clearly replaced as soon as
Attianus reached Rome. Macer was himself an historian, who wrote an account
of Augustus. Perhaps he went back to writing history, as another senator of his
generation was doing at this very time - subtly hinting at parallels with current
events: Cornelius Tacitus, at work on his Annales.A
Within a few days, perhaps within a few hours, of his acclamation, Hadrian
gave the order for the total evacuation of Mesopotamia, Assyria and Greater
Armenia. In truth, much of the newly conquered territory had in effect been
surrendered by Trajan himself. But as the HA reports the action, Hadrian 'aban-
doned' everything beyond the Euphrates and Tigris. That meant the immediate
withdrawal from the three new provinces. Further, by early in the next year at the
latest he had arranged the removal of the puppet Parthian king crowned by
Trajan at Ctesiphon, Parthamaspates, and had him installed as ruler of Osrhoene.
The rest could be left to Chosroes and his rival Vologaeses to fight over. Hadrian
was following, so he was to claim, the example of Cato, who pronounced that
'the Macedonians must have their freedom because they cannot be protected'.
Hadrian's devotion to early Latin literature was well known: 'He preferred Cato
to Cicero, Ennius to Virgil, Caelius [Antipater] to Sallust', the HA notes later on.
Hadrian must have quoted the old Censor's speech De Macedonia liberanda, still
extant in late antiquity. It was not a convincing precedent, on any count. 5
The second desperately necessary move was also decided at once. Lusius
Quietus was removed from his new command in Judaea. He was 'suspected of
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THE NEW RULER
designs on the throne', says the HA. Such aspirations seem preposterous for the
Moorish chieftain, in spite of his startling promotion by Trajan: senatorial rank,
a consulship, and the mandate to continue, as governor of Judaea, his savage
suppression of dissent or revolt among the Jewish people. Quietus was still
regarded as a barbarian, and besides must have been an old man now. But
Hadrian and he were enemies. The fear that Quietus might lend his support to
a rival might well have seemed serious enough in the summer of 117. 6
The letter of dismissal was presumably carried by Quietus' successor, probably
one of the men on the spot with Hadrian in Syria. But there may have been an
acting governor. At about this time the procurator Claudius Paternus
Clementianus, a man from Raetia, replaced an unnamed legate of Judaea. It
might have been Quietus in 117. The disgraced governor was also deprived of
his 'private army', the Moorish tribesmen he had led in Rome's wars for some
twenty-five years. They were sent back home - and, within weeks this treatment
and indignation at it among their fellow-countrymen led to open revolt in
Mauretania. In Judaea the reaction was understandably quite the opposite: the
fall of the butcher of Babylonian Jewry was to lead at least one Jew to hail
Hadrian as a deliverer. Something may even have led to the mistaken belief that
they would be allowed to rebuild their Temple. 7
W h o was physically with Hadrian at this moment is hard to establish. The
identity of the officers in the army of Syria, for example, is not known. One may
conjecture that one of the tribuni laticlavii was young Haterius Nepos, whose
father had been procurator of Greater Armenia two years before. The younger
Haterius was evidently with Hadrian when he returned to Rome the following
summer. Another who was to return to Rome with Hadrian was M. Hosidius
Geta, perhaps legate of one of the eastern legions in 117. Only one companion
at Antioch in August 117 is recorded by name, the sharp-witted Greek intellec-
tual, Valerius Eudaemon: the HA calls him conscius imperii, an 'accomplice in
gaining the throne'. Eudaemon was evidently despatched almost at once to
Egypt with the appointment of'procurator for the administration of Alexandria
{ad dioecesin Alexandriae), a relatively junior post but one which would enable
him to keep an eye on things there. More important, Eudaemon probably came
with a letter of dismissal for the Prefect Rutilius Lupus. The new Prefect was Q.
Rammius Martialis, a former commander of the vigiles at Rome. He must surely
have been in the east with Hadrian, for he was already in office in Egypt before
the end of August. Eudaemon, one might conjecture, may have encouraged
Hadrian to issue an edict confirming the privileges to philosophers, rhetors,
grammatici, and doctors granted by Vespasian and Trajan. At any rate, a letter
of Antoninus Pius, preserved in the Digest, refers to Hadrian's edict as coming
'straight after his accession to power'. 8
After these urgent measures Hadrian left Antioch 'to view Trajan's remains,
which were being conducted by Attianus, Plotina and Matidia.' They were
presumably travelling from Selinus towards him. 'When he had intercepted
them', the HA proceeds, 'he put them on a ship to be transported to Rome.'
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THE NEW RULER
With Trajan's ashes, conveyed by the dowager Empress, with Matidia, and with
Attianus - Sabina presumably stayed with her husband - went Hadrians letter
to the Senate, 'and it was composed with very great care'. He requested divine
honours for Trajan (anything else would have been unthinkable) and asked the
Senate's pardon for not submitting to it the question of his accession: his salu-
tation by the soldiers had been over-hasty, to be sure, but the commonwealth
could not be left without an emperor. 9
A curious by-product of Trajan's death has been detected. Not only was
Selinus renamed Trajanopolis, it received the status of ius Italicum, even though
it was not made a colonia. Trajan was the first emperor to have died outside Italy.
Was it deemed expedient to create the fiction that the place where he expired
was in fact equivalent to part of Italy - or was Trajan himself, indeed, supposed
to have declared Selinus to have this status? In other words, was it thought
important that his last action, the adoption of a successor, should have taken
place on Italian' soil?10
The remains of another person who had just died had been left at Selinus.
O n 12 August, a few days after his master's death, Trajan's butler, the freedman
Phaedimus, expired. He was only twenty-eight years old. Given Trajan's propen-
sities, the servant in charge of the imperial wine cabinet was bound to have been
in close contact with his master. And since Trajan - according to Dio - had been
convinced that he was being poisoned, people might have wanted to interrogate
Phaedimus. Perhaps he committed suicide, out of panic, or just from grief. But
Attianus may have eliminated him in case he said too much. Phaedimus'
remains would only be interred at Rome more than twelve years later.11
By the time the ship was under sail for Italy, Hadrian will have known the
dimensions of the crisis. A century later Marius Maximus rose to Tacitean
heights (it may be argued), when summarising the simultaneous eruption of
revolt and invasion which had flared up all around the frontiers. T h e HA
biographer perhaps allowed himself a direct quotation of Maximus' sombre
sentences, in a passage which echoes the opening of Tacitus' Histories: 'The
nations conquered by Trajan were in revolt; the Moors were on the rampage; the
Britons could not be kept under Roman sovereignty; Egypt was ravaged by
uprisings; finally, Libya and Palestine displayed the spirit of rebellion.' The last
three, Egypt, the Cyrenaica and Judaea, were all part of the same business: the
Jewish revolt, most drastic in the diaspora, but, as signalised by the appointment
of Quietus, breaking out or expected in the homeland too. Marcius Turbo had
by now virtually crushed the rebels in Egypt and the Cyrenaica, even if some
fighting was still going on. At any rate, Turbo, still based in or near Egypt, with
his mixed force from fleet and army, could now be sent to deal with the very
different outbreak of trouble further west, in Mauretania. 12
But Hadrian could not yet return to Rome. There was another threat, more
serious than any other: beyond the Danube. Quadratus Bassus, sent there by
Trajan from Syria to defend the new territories, the jewel in the imperial crown,
'died on campaign in Dacia.' Whether in action against the enemy - who would
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THE NEW RULER
have been free Dacians, it may be assumed, as well as the Sarmatians to east and
west of Trajan's Dacia - or simply from natural causes, his loss was a heavy blow.
The garrison of Dacia and the Danubian provinces was below strength: several
legions and numerous auxiliary regiments had been drawn off for the Parthian
expedition. Hence 'the armies were sent ahead' from the east to 'Illyricum'.
Hadrian would follow as soon as he could safely leave Syria. There were still
matters to deal with, not least finding a successor for Quadratus Bassus. Hadrians
choice fell on Avidius Nigrinus - so at least it may be conjectured. Nigrinus, it
seems probable, had been in Achaia as imperial legate during Hadrian's stay in
Greece before the war, and was probably regarded as a friend. 13
By late September Hadrian should have learned the Senate's response to his
letter: it was effusive and conciliatory. The honours voted for Trajan went beyond
his own proposal; and he himself was to hold a triumph and was to be called Pater
Patriae. These honours for himself Hadrian rejected. Coins had now been issued
at Rome, one with Trajan as emperor on the obverse, on the reverse Hadrian,
with the name 'Hadrianus Traianus Caesar'; the other showing Hadrian as
emperor, 'Traianus Hadrianus', with Trajan's titles 'Optimus Augustus
Germanicus Dacicus', and, on the reverse, the legend adoptio, with Trajan and
Hadrian clasping hands and Hadrian as Pater Patriae, along with other titles,
and son of the deified Parthicus Traianus. The need to proclaim the legitimacy of
the succession is manifest. 14
Plate 5 Hadrian as Caesar, a unique gold coin from late summer 117
(MTCIIIp. 124)
For the majority of the inhabitants of the empire, who had not yet seen
Hadrian, these first coin issues would in any case have conveyed a startling
novelty: the new ruler wore a beard. He was the first high-ranking Roman not
to be clean-shaven for many centuries. One need not suppose that Hadrian had
suddenly thrown his razors away when he was acclaimed Emperor. He might
have stopped shaving as a young man, one of the aspects of his behaviour which
earned him the nickname Graeculus. Or his Greek beard of the traditional kind
was a result of his conjectured visit to Epictetus a few years earlier. At all events,
within a short time the adult male population of the empire followed suit:
beards became the norm for almost a century. 15
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6
0
Plate 6 Hadrian's 'adoption' celebrated by the imperial coinage

(BMCIII Hadrian no. 8)
The official ceremony of deification would have to wait until Hadrian was in
Rome. Meanwhile Trajan could already be called Divus Traianus, as the Senate
had voted. In the Greek east this was in any case a mere technicality: emperors
were regularly treated as divine in their lifetime. Panegyrists were no doubt at
work all over the empire at festivities to hail the new ruler's accession. A specimen
happens to be preserved on papyrus, an extract from a speech delivered at one of
the Egyptian nome-capita\s, it seems. The orator imagines a divine message:
I have mounted with Trajan to Heaven in a white-horsed chariot and

return to you, my people, I who am not unknown to you, the god
Phoebus, and proclaim to you the new King Hadrian. To him let all things
be happily subject, both by reason of his virtue and on account of his
divine father's blessed fortune. It is for us now to make sacrifice of burnt
offerings, to drink draughts from the fountains, to make merry with oil
from the gymnasium, all these things furnished for you by the Governor,
from his loyalty towards the Emperor and from his love towards you.
The author might have been a certain Orion, whose Panegyric on Hadrian
was still extant in Byzantine times. At any rate, the Prefect Rammius Martialis
no doubt regarded some use of public funds as desirable in the ravaged
province. 16
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Martialis or his advisers may have had an even better idea. The eastern
provinces would no doubt have been particularly impressed by the symbolism
of the Phoenix, which featured on Hadrian's early coins. To be sure, the
legendary bird was supposed to appear only once every 500 years - and a
sighting had been reported in Egypt in the reign of Tiberius, less than a century
earlier. Tacitus has a learned digression on the subject in his Annals - how the
reborn phoenix dutifully transported its parent's ashes to the temple of the Sun.
He expresses doubt as to the authenticity of the Tiberian manifestation, but,
he solemnly adds, 'there is no dispute that the bird in question is seen in
Egypt from time to time.' As it happens, Claudius had produced a phoenix to
symbolise and authenticate his new saeculum only a few years after. Nobody
believed in it. Tacitus may have been gently mocking a recent claim: that the
Phoenix had been sighted soon after Hadrian's accession. Be that as it may,
the royal bird that died on the fire, to be reborn from the ashes, was a powerful
symbol, which Hadrian will not have scorned. 17
When the moment came to leave Syria for the Balkans, Catilius Severus, after
leading his men out of Greater Armenia, joined Hadrian at Antioch and was
installed as legate of Syria. There is one other action that Hadrian took in Syria
between his accession and his departure for the north: he blocked up the
Castalian spring at Daphne with a great mass of stone. The prophetic waters had
foretold his rule; he did not want them to do the same for anyone else. An
inscription from Rome has been plausibly claimed to register a few stages in
Hadrian's journey north-westwards: what survives is an itinerary for the days
13-19 October, from Mopsucrene, 12 miles beyond Tarsus, then northwards
over the Taurus into Cappadocia, via Tyana. He was heading for Ancyra in
Galatia, which - if he continued to travel at 15-18 miles (25-30 km) a day, as
suggested by the itinerary - he probably reached by the end of October.
A detachment of the Praetorian Guard and the Horse Guards - the 'Batavians'
— must be assumed to have been with him. The bulk of the forces sent back to
the west had gone on ahead. 18
At Ancyra a descendant of the Galatian kings, Latinius Alexander, donated to
the city the funds needed for the accommodation of 'the greatest emperor Caesar
Traianus Hadrianus Augustus on his visit, and of his sacred armies' - during 'a
whole year'. This should mean that some units had arrived in Ancyra well before
Trajan's death, probably accompanying Quadratus Bassus on his way to counter
the attack on Dacia. The generosity of Alexander was gratefully registered on the
base of a statue set up to his daughter Cleopatra. 19
Hadrian probably stayed for some days at Ancyra, capital of the province
Galatia and the nodal point of important routes across Anatolia, to recuperate a
little and to deal with incoming dispatches. He was at any rate there long enough
to found a 'mystic contest' {mystikos agon) for the worship of Dionysus. As was
later recorded in a decree of the association of artists who performed, Hadrian
himself, as lneos Dionysos, was included in the ceremonies jointly with the god.
O n later visits to the Greek half of the empire he would receive countless honours
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- or worship - of this kind, and would be able to stay long enough to relish them.
This time desperately urgent business demanded that he press forward. 20
O n 11 November he was already just inside Bithynia, about five days' journey
west of Ancyra on the Nicaea road, at Juliopolis, 'a frontier place, with a great
deal of traffic passing through it', as the governor of Pontus-Bithynia had written
to Trajan a few years before. 'The little town' found this a heavy burden and
Pliny had asked Trajan to post a legionary centurion there (Trajan declined).
How Juliopolis coped with Hadrian and the army is not known - and there
were other visitors as well. There happens to be record of a delegation from the
'Synod of Neoi (young men)' of Pergamum, congratulating Hadrian on his
succession. Hadrian dictated a rapid reply: '11 November, from Juliopolis.
Noting from your letter and through your representative Claudius Cyrus the
great joy you have expressed at our succession, I consider this a sign of your
excellence.' A copy of the letter was duly engraved in a public place at
Pergamum. Hadrian would be greeted by delegations of this kind everywhere he
went for the rest of his reign. Pergamum may have been very much in Hadrian's
thoughts. It was the home of Quadratus Bassus. At some time during his
journey Hadrian decided to signify openly his respect for the great marshal: he
ordered that his remains should be conveyed under military escort back
to Pergamum, to be interred in a tomb paid for by the imperial fisc. It was a
kind of substitute for the public funeral, funus censorium, reserved for Rome's
greatest sons. 21
All the while missives must have been arriving from every part of the empire:
from Attianus at Rome, from Turbo in Mauretania, but especially from the
Danube. The man on the spot, with whom Hadrian was hurrying to confer, was
Pompeius Falco, governor of Moesia Inferior. Falco was an experienced general,
who had commanded V Macedonica in the first Dacian war and governed both
Lycia-Pamphylia and Judaea before becoming consul in the same year as
Hadrian, 108. He had been legate of the now massive Lower Moesian province
for at least two years, and must have been leading the resistance against the
Roxolani and free Dacians together with Quadratus Bassus. Falco can be
regarded as a personal friend of Hadrian: for one thing, he was married to Sosia
Polla, Senecio's daughter. Polla had been with Falco in his province; she bore
him a son in 117 or 118. Another friend (explicitly and repeatedly so described
in the HA), Platorius Nepos, who had commanded a legion in the Parthian war,
had by now become governor of Thrace. This was a province that Hadrian
would be staying in for some time. It would be good to have Nepos there. 22
Hadrian's movements and their timing in the next six months can only be
reconstructed in their bare outlines. What is clear is the outcome, which was -
in the eyes of many - shocking and demeaning for Rome. Large portions of
Trajan's conquests north of the Lower Danube were abandoned: the great
plains of Oltenia and Muntenia, the south-eastern flank of the Carpathians and
southern Moldavia, which had all been added to Moesia Inferior after the first
Dacian war, were restored to the Sarmatian Roxolani. N o doubt on the advice
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of Falco, the order was even given to dismantle the superstructure of the Danube
bridge below the Iron Gates, constructed by Trajan's master-architect
Apollodorus. Probably it was only an emergency measure, taken because an
enemy breakthrough westwards across the River Alutus (Aluta or Olt) or, in the
case of the Jazyges, southwards from a point between the legionary base Berzovia
and Trajan's Dacian colonia, was a real threat. O n no account could Hadrian
allow an invasion across the Danube. 2 3
It is perhaps understandable that he should be accused of surrendering
'Dacia', even by someone who should have known better, the orator Cornelius
Fronto, who must have been in his late teens at the time of Hadrian's accession.
But so soon after the evacuation of the new eastern provinces, this further with-
drawal must have provoked anger, resentment and exaggeration. Hadrian could
with some plausibility be alleged to have contemplated giving up Dacia itself.
His rivals and enemies now had even better grounds for seeking to overthrow
him. 24
It has been suggested that he wintered at Nicomedia or Byzantium, combining
the amenities of the Marmara with the strategic advantages of the imperial high-
way to the west, the Via Egnatia. Whether he could permit himself the luxury of
more than a few weeks in either city is perhaps doubtful, given the urgency of the
crisis. Still, one may conjecture that he inaugurated the year 118, as consul for
the second time, at the city which became 'the second Rome' two centuries later.
His consular colleague, Pedanius Fuscus, the husband of his niece Julia, will
surely have held office at Rome. Whether or not Hadrian stayed at Byzantium, at
the start of 118 or later, he did at some stage accept honorary office there for
two successive years. Three weeks later, on 24 January, was Hadrian's birthday.
He was forty-two, exactly the age prescribed by the old lex annalis for the
tenure of the consulship. There was not much for him to celebrate, although
loyal messages no doubt poured in. Perhaps the presence of Platorius Nepos
made some kind of party feasible. Whether Sabina was with him is unknown: she
had to accompany him on his future travels, even though her relations with
Hadrian were doubtless already cold and formal. Hadrian was still receiving - or
replying to - messages of congratulation on his accession after the start of the
new year: his letters of thanks to Delphi and to little Astypalaea in the Cyclades
happen to be preserved. Four days after his birthday, the thirtieth anniversary of
Trajan's accession on 28 January was a further occasion for festivities throughout
the empire. Many admirers of the great Imperator must have gritted their teeth
as they reflected on what his successor was doing. 25
Hadrian's presence this winter in 'Scythia' can perhaps be inferred from a little
ditty the poet Florus sent him a few years later: Hadrian had had to 'endure the
Scythian frosts'. The trouble is that 'Scythia' and 'Scythians' were elastic terms
- theoretically it could be argued that the poem means Hadrian actually went
well beyond the Danube mouths into what is now Ukraine. More likely Florus
meant the territory between the Danube and the Black Sea that was later called
Scythia Minor. Twenty years earlier Hadrian had spent a few months as tribune
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THE NEW RULER
of V Macedonica. His old legion was now based at Troesmis, which would not
have been a bad place for him to supervise the withdrawal of Roman garrisons
- including the most northerly, Piroboridava on the River Hierasus (Sereth),
some 60 miles (100 km) to the north-west. At Troesmis, if not at one of the
cities of the coast, Tomis or Histria or Callatis, he could have conducted nego-
tiations with the king of the Roxolani. Quite what the status of this people had
been under the Trajanic dispensation is not clear. Perhaps they had been allowed
an enclave within the Transdanubian part of Moesia Inferior that Hadrian
now gave up. The HA says that 'the king was complaining at the reduction of
his subsidy.' 26
At all events, peace was concluded. The king became a Roman citizen, taking
the names P. Aelius Rasparaganus, and must be assumed to have been granted
the status of 'friend of the Roman people'. In return for these concessions and
favours Hadrian may have received something from Rasparaganus: a splendid
horse. His favourite hunter a few years later was an animal called Borysthenes,
an Alan', still in youthful prime. It has been suggested plausibly enough that it
was bred among the Alani, neighbours and kinsmen of the Roxolani, somewhere
near the River Borysthenes (Dnieper), and that Hadrian acquired it at this time.
Of course, the horse could equally have been a gift from the Greeks of Tyras
(on the estuary of the Dniester) or of Olbia (on the Dnieper), or from the king
of the Bosporus (Crimea) - all clients of Rome, who will have confirmed their
allegiance at this time. 27
If peace could have been made with the Roxolani before the winter was over
- which is far from certain - matters were not so easily settled with the other
branch of the Sarmatians, the Jazyges on the western flank of the Dacian
province. Perhaps Hadrian came to Dacia first before he acted, perhaps the
reports of what was being done by the governor of that province and by the
legate of Pannonia Inferior suggested that something more drastic was needed.
At all events, probably as soon as he heard that peace had been restored in
Mauretania, he sent for Marcius Turbo. This was a friend he could trust. It is at
least attested that before Hadrian left the Danube for Rome, Turbo was made
acting governor of both Dacia and Pannonia Inferior. He was not a senator, yet
was to command an army of several legions. That there was a sense of outrage
in some quarters need not be doubted. Particular resentment would be felt by
the senators serving in the two provinces - the two governors who lost their
posts to a hard-bitten former centurion, and the legionary legates. 28
It has been conjectured above that the man who had taken over Dacia when
Quadratus Bassus died was Avidius Nigrinus. His tenure of the office is known
only from an undated dedication made at the legionary base Apulum in
northern Dacia by M. Calventius Viator, centurion of IV Flavia and training
officer (exercitator) of Nigrinus' horse guards (equites singulares). Nigrinus is
unlikely to have governed Dacia until several years after his consulship, which
was in 110, and could not have held the office later that 118 - for the good
reason that he did not survive that year.
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The HA reports that Nigrinus conspired to kill Hadrian, that Lusius Quietus
and 'many others' were his accomplices, and that Hadrian escaped their attempt
on his life while he was sacrificing. Cassius Dio's version, which survives only in
the epitome by John Xiphilinus, is slightly different. That he places the (alleged)
assassination plot during a hunt instead of 'while Hadrian was sacrificing' is not
a real discrepancy: hunts would begin and end with a sacrifice. Unlike the HA,
which states it as a fact that 'Hadrian escaped Nigrinus' ambush', Dio treats the
whole affair as a frame-up. But even if Nigrinus and his 'accomplices' were
framed, there must have been an occasion in the early part of 118 when he could
have been in a position to strike Hadrian down. It is surely plausible that
Hadrian did indeed go hunting with Nigrinus and that something happened
which - perhaps only later - could be construed as an abortive assassination
attempt. The allegation against him would otherwise have been too absurd to
invent. Nigrinus must have been with Hadrian. As to the whereabouts of Lusius
Quietus at this time, nothing is known. It is hardly likely that Hadrian had
obliged him to remain with the imperial entourage. His alleged complicity need
only mean that Nigrinus was claimed to have been in touch with him. 29
If Nigrinus plotted - or could plausibly be alleged to have plotted - to kill
Hadrian, his real motives, and those of his supposed fellow-conspirators, are
not far to seek: deep resentment at the abandonment of Trajan's conquests.
In Nigrinus' own case, the HA, after stating that 'he had prepared an ambush
against Hadrian as he was sacrificing, Lusius being his accomplice, and many
others', adds a curious comment, 'even though Hadrian had intended him as his
own successor! That Hadrian within a few months of his accession seriously
planned to make Nigrinus his heir seems hardly credible. Could the HA
biographer have misunderstood his source? It is easy to explain why he could
have taken 'successor' in the wrong sense: eighteen years later Nigrinus' step-
son Ceionius Commodus would become Hadrian's adopted son and heir. With
a simple change in the Latin word order - as was long ago suggested - a quite
different meaning merges: Nigrinus plotted against Hadrian "because Hadrian
had appointed a successor for him as well\ in other words, as well as for
Lusius. Both men, in other words, were alleged to have acted purely out of
wounded pride. 30
O n this interpretation, Nigrinus' attempt on Hadrian's life was made imme-
diately following his dismissal, after only a few months in office as legate on
Dacia, and his replacement by Marcius Turbo. He and Lusius Quietus would
have been confident of support from influential quarters. Be this as it may,
Nigrinus was allowed to go home, to Faventia (Faenza) in northern Italy. But
there he was killed; Quietus was put to death 'on a journey'; and two other
leading men were also struck down, Cornelius Palma at the Campanian resort of
Baiae, Publilius Celsus at Tarracina in Latium. Both had enjoyed great distinc-
tion under Trajan, with second consulships and other honours. But - so it was
claimed — they were known as old enemies of Hadrian, who had been out of
favour for several years, indeed under suspicion of planning to seize power. Their
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fall from grace in the closing stages of the Parthian war had supposedly given
Hadrian the signal that his own adoption was a matter of course. 31
The order to execute the four ex-consuls for treason was given by the Senate
and carried out by Attianus. Hadrian was to assert that he had not wanted them
to die, and he put the blame on Attianus. This wretched affair cast a blight over
Hadrian's relations with the Senate. The account in the HA reflects the official
version, designed to show that all four acted from unworthy personal motives.
It may be more plausible to postulate that they had all opposed Hadrian's change
of policy. But whether there was a 'conspiracy' in which these four men - not
to mention the 'many others' of which the HA speaks - were participants may
be doubted. 32
Few probably mourned Lusius Quietus; and, in spite of his undoubted
distinction, virtually nothing is known of Publilius Celsus. But Palma had
certainly been one of Trajan's closest associates: consul for the first time, as
ordinarius indeed, in 99, with Sosius Senecio as colleague, he must above been an
especial favourite, to whom Trajan owed something. He had earned further
esteem as governor of Syria, when he carried through the bloodless annexation of
Arabia.
Less is recorded about Nigrinus' career, but something of the man, earnest
and conscientious, is conveyed in Pliny's Letters. As tribune of the plebs in
105 he had read out in the Senate 'an eloquent and important statement',
denouncing the - illegal - acceptance of fees by advocates, and asked that Trajan
should remedy the evil. He was again active in 106, as prosecution counsel
against a proconsul of Bithynia whom Pliny was defending. Pliny called a speech
of his 'concise, impressive, well-phrased'. Besides this, Nigrinus' father and uncle
Quietus were close friends of Plutarch. Both had governed Achaia, where
Nigrinus was also to serve, and it was to them that Plutarch dedicated his treatise
On Brotherly Love. Hadrian ought to have known 'perhaps the most admired of
Plutarch's philosophical writings', addressed to Quietus, On the Delays of Divine
Vengeance. Quietus had also been a close friend of the great Stoic senator
Thrasea, Nero's victim. 33
Some people may have reflected on these matters when Quietus' nephew and
his three 'fellow-conspirators' were condemned to death by the Senate, not least
those who had to vote for the motion. Cornelius Tacitus might have been
there, although his age (he was now about 60) could have exempted him from
attendance. It is possible to detect veiled allusions to this affair in his Annales. At
the beginning, there are curious remarks on the four alleged rivals of Tiberius and
their extinction. In the last book, when he has to recount the fate of Thrasea and
others, Tacitus' tone becomes weary. Even if he were writing of men who died for
the fatherland in foreign wars, he would be sickened and his readers would avert
their gaze from 'deaths of fellow-citizens, honourable perhaps, but depressing
in their cumulation'. As it is, 'servile passivity and so much blood shed at home
weary the spirit and cramp it with sorrow. I ask no excuse from those who know
about these matters - except that I do not hate those who perished so tamely.' 34
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A minor figure has been supposed to have done well out of this sad business:
Calventius Viator, the training-officer of Nigrinus' guards, was later to become
the acting commander of Hadrian's own Horse Guards. It has been argued that
he 'was given the position because he had served the Emperor well with respect
to his personal safety, obviously by betraying Nigrinus' plot.' The notion is
ingenious - but Viator is first on record in charge of the equites singulares Augusti
ten years later. All that can really be said is that Hadrian clearly did not hold it
against him that he had once served Avidius Nigrinus. For that matter, Nigrinus'
cousin, the younger Quietus, was allowed to pursue his career and a few years
later became proconsul of Asia.35
By the spring Hadrian was in Pannonia, and his Horse Guards, the
'Batavians', were with him. Dio reports the impact made by these men: 'so
beautifully trained were his troops that the cavalry of the "Batavians", as they
were called, swam across the Danube fully armed. Seeing this, the barbarians
were terrified of the Romans, and, turning to their own affairs, they used
Hadrian as arbitrator in their disputes.' The tombstone of one of the troopers
who swam the river boasted of his feat: 'I am the man once well known on
Pannonian shores, brave and foremost among a thousand Batavian men: with
Hadrian as my judge I was able to swim the vast waters of the deep Danube
fully armed.' He added another achievement: 'from my bow I shot an arrow,
while it hung in the air and was falling I hit and split it with another - neither
Roman nor barbarian, no soldier with a spear, no Parthian with a bow, could
ever outdo me.'36
The Danube crops up again in a quite different anecdote about Hadrian's
stay in Pannonia at this time. As always, delegations sought the Emperor out,
wherever he might be. A young man from an ancient and powerful Athenian
family had to speak before Hadrian, Herodes Atticus. Hadrian must have met
young Herodes at Athens six years earlier. Herodes' father Atticus was by a long
way the most powerful and influential man in that city and one of the richest
men in the empire, in spite of the confiscation of some of the family fortune.
Herodes was now barely seventeen years old and the occasion was too much for
him: he broke down in the middle of his speech. 'In his humiliation he rushed
to the River Danube as though he was going to throw himself in. So over-
whelming was his ambition to become a famous orator that he treated the
penalty of failure as death.' Hadrian was no doubt merely amused by the
episode: both Herodes and his father Atticus would enjoy imperial favour within
a few years.37
It may be assumed that while he was in Pannonia Hadrian conferred with the
governor of the Upper province, Minicius Natalis, an experienced and senior
man - he had been consul in 106 and in Pannonia since before the start of the
Parthian war. Furthermore, Natalis came from Barcino and had probably been
a protege of Licinius Sura. He may be regarded as a friend and supporter of the
new Emperor.38 Hadrian remained in the Danube lands throughout the spring
and into the early summer of 118. Much must have remained to be done.
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The display of their prowess by the Horse Guards which so impressed 'the
barbarians' and induced them to make Hadrian the arbitrator in their disputes
may have been a show of strength on the eve of his departure for Rome.
Whether the war against the Jazyges of the Hungarian plain was already over
is not certain. Hadrian perhaps campaigned in person against this people - as
he may have done twenty years earlier when governing Pannonia Inferior. It may
have been at this time, the only moment in his reign when he is known for
certain to have been in Pannonia, that he founded a colonia in the Lower
province, at Mursa (Osijek). It was the last colonia to be established in the
Danubian lands as a new city - later creations in the region were promoted
municipia. No details are known about Mursa, even whether it was a settlement
for legionary veterans of the traditional type. 39
It may also have been the impressions gained during this stay that made
Hadrian decide to confer charters on a string of other communities, making
them municipia. Three were major centres already, the seats of the governors of
Upper and Lower Pannonia and of Upper Moesia: Carnuntum, Aquincum and
Viminacium. All three were separate and distinct communities from the canabae
or civil settlements that nestled close to the legionary fortresses. If the decision
was taken in principle now, it was not implemented at once - Aquincum was
still just a vicus four years later. In addition, a number of communities in the
interior of Pannonia became municipia under Hadrian: Bassiana and Cibalae
in the south of the Lower province, between the rivers Save and Danube; in
Pannonia Superior Mogentiana, Municipium Iasorum, Salla and perhaps
Halicanum and Mursella. These were all, unlike the first three, essentially native
civitas capitals. This was, of course, the territory that Hadrian, who had
governed Lower Pannonia ten years earlier, knew best of all the provinces in the
Latin west. Even so, the impetus thus given to 'romanisation' is very striking. A
single community in the interior of Upper Moesia, Ulpianum, also received
municipal status. It was clearly connected to the lead-silver mines (metalla
Ulpiana) opened up under Trajan. 40
The troubles elsewhere in the empire had not all been settled. In Britain the
rebellion - presumably in the far north of the province - would cost many
Roman lives. Hadrian decided to send Falco there as governor. An inscription at
Tomis on the Black Sea coast commemorates his appointment. He presumably
went straight from Moesia Inferior, along the Danube, where he could confer
with Hadrian before proceeding via the Germanies to his new command. 4 1
It is probable enough that Falco, in collaboration with Marcius Turbo, had
begun the new settlement of the Transdanubian territories. The remaining part
of Moesia Inferior north of the river now became a separate province and was
labelled 'Dacia Inferior'. It had no legion and was assigned to an equestrian
procurator as governor. Trajan's Dacia at first received the name Dacia Superior,
but within a short time, perhaps only after a few months, it was to be sub-
divided: the heart of the province, in Transylvania, was designated Dacia
Superior, with its capital at the colonia Ulpia (Sarmizegethusa) and a single
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legion, XIII Gemina, at Apulum. The legate of the legion would in future be
the governor, on the model of Pannonia Inferior and a few other provinces. The
northernmost part, however, was detached, and, like 'Dacia Inferior', was
assigned to a procurator-governor, under the name 'Dacia Porolissensis' (from
the base of Porolissum). There had only been a single chartered town in Trajan's
Dacia, the colonia Ulpia, now in the Upper province. Napoca in Porolissensis
and Drobeta in the southern part of Dacia Superior certainly acquired the status
of municipium under Hadrian. Malva, formerly in Moesia, now in Dacia
Inferior, was perhaps already a colonial1
New governors were, for the time being, not installed in the newly
demarcated provinces. The HA preserves, in a confused form, a statement -
repeated with a slight variation in the space of a few lines - about Hadrian's
arrangement. In the first version, 'he put Marcius Turbo - after Mauretania
- temporarily in charge of Pannonia and Dacia, adorned with the insignia of the
Prefecture.' In the second version Hadrian 'came to Rome, having entrusted
Dacia to Turbo, adorned with the title of the Egyptian prefecture, so that he
should have more authority.' Something has been garbled in the HA biographer's
hasty excerpting of Marius Maximus' Vita Hadriani. Turbo had been in Egypt
shortly before, but as commander of a task-force (perhaps continuing to hold
the rank of admiral of the Misenum fleet), not as Prefect of that province. But
he was to become Guard Prefect: Hadrian dismissed Attianus and installed
Turbo in his stead. It may well be that this appointment was made while
Hadrian was still on the Danube front. He would have already been informed
of the outrage that followed the killing of the four consulars. He needed to shift
the blame onto Attianus, who had carried out the deed.43 The HA puts
Hadrian's move a little later, after he was back at Rome:
Since he could not tolerate any longer the power of Attianus, his Prefect
and former tutor, he tried to kill him — but was deterred, because he
was already under pressure from the hostility aroused by the killing of
the four consulars - of course, he was trying to shift the responsibility for
the decision for their deaths onto Attianus' shoulders.
At first Attianus refused to resign. He was 'leaned on' - and Turbo replaced
him.44
An altar set up in one of the cities in Moesia Inferior, somewhere on the Black
Sea coast, by a freedman of Turbo, ought to mean that Turbo himself was there
- furthermore, the dedicator, Capito, gives his patron the title 'Prefect of the
Guard'. This implies that Turbo had already been named Guard Prefect before
he left the Danube area - and that he was active well beyond the provinces with
which, according to the HA, he was explicitly entrusted by Hadrian. However
this may be, a military diploma confirms that he was the commanding general
in both Pannonia Inferior and Dacia Porolissensis, under whom men from one
ala in the former province and two alae and a cohort in the latter were serving
when they received the privileges of discharge. Unfortunately the dating of
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THE NEW RULER
Turbos mission is not clarified by the document: the men in these units were
forgotten about for several years - the constitutio was not issued until 10 August
123, long after Turbo had gone back to Rome. 45
Turbo might conceivably have gone to Moesia Inferior to keep an eye on the
province until a successor arrived for Pompeius Falco. The man chosen for this
task - a delicate one, given that a large portion of Moesia Inferior had just been
abandoned to the Roxolani or assigned to the newly created Dacia Inferior -
was, it seems clear, a favourite of Hadrian, Ummidius Quadratus. He was
serving as suffect consul in May of 118, as one of a series of replacements for
Pedanius Fuscus to have the honour of being Hadrian's colleague. If Quadratus
was in Rome at all as consul, the odds are that he completed his term of office
in absentia. This earnest young aristocrat - who had been, like Fuscus, praised
and cherished by Pliny - was also, it has been conjectured, a son-in-law of
Annius Verus, Hadrians principal ally in the Senate and already City Prefect.46
In June, it seems, Hadrian finally left for Rome, probably overland, to Emona
(Ljubljana), then across the Julian Alps, along the coast to Ariminum (Rimini)
and down the Via Flaminia. He may have had a reminder of the Jazyges, against
whom he had - for the second time - had to fight. Twenty years later a Jazygian
huntsman was with him, a man named Mastor. 'He had been a prisoner of war
and had been employed by Hadrian as a huntsman because of his strength and
daring', Dio records. Mastor had doubtless seen service already. That Hadrian
went hunting, for boar, in Pannonia, mounted on Borysthenes, was registered
by Hadrian himself four years later, when he composed his horse's epitaph in
Gaul. 47
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For many months the mint at Rome had been dutifully anticipating Hadrian's
return with coins bearing the legend Fort(una) Red(ux). By mid-June at the latest
he must have been in Italy. A delegation from the Senate is likely enough to have
gone some way north to greet him. It was 9 July when he entered the city. The
Arval Brethren promptly foregathered to sacrifice, as they did on every solemn
state occasion, as well as for their own peculiar worship of the Dea Dia - they
had already had seven sessions this year. Hadrian himself had, as was normal,
been co-opted into the brotherhood when he became Emperor. He would have
had to go to the Capitol in any case himself, to give thanks to Jupiter - as Trajan
had done in 99. Even so, it seems somewhat astonishing that he chose to attend
in person, as one of the fratres, while the magister Trebicius Decianus sacrificed
seven beasts in the name of the college, one each to Jupiter, Juno, Minerva, Sal us
Publica, Mars the Avenger, Victoria and Vesta, in thanksgiving for Hadrian's
'auspicious advent'. 1
No source gives a description of his adventus - the coins issued shortly
afterwards have only a symbolic depiction. Roma, sitting on a cuirass, holds a
sceptre in her left hand and extends her other hand to the Emperor standing
before her. No doubt the magistrates, senators, equestrians, suitably garlanded
and festive - and Sulpicius Similis with the Guard cohorts that had stayed in
Rome - were on hand to greet the Princeps as he and his party and escorting
soldiers approached the city.2
There were newly installed consuls, in office from 1 July. Hadrian and his
latest colleague Ummidius Quadratus had laid down the fasces at the end of June,
Quadratus as well as Hadrian probably in absentia - he is likely to have left
Rome some time earlier, to replace Pompeius Falco in Moesia Inferior. One of the
new pair of consuls, Sabinius Barbarus, was probably not there either, but in
Numidia (he had become legate of III Augusta the previous year). The other
sufifect consul, L. Pomponius Bassus, a well-connected aristocrat, presumably
did the honours. The City Prefect would also be there, Annius Verus, and, surely,
the imperial ladies, the Dowager, Plotina, and the junior Augusta, Matidia, the
mother-in-law that Hadrian so much cherished. Hadrian's sister Paulina should
have been present, and her now elderly husband Servianus was probably obliged
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Plate 7 Hadrian's return to Rome in 118: ADVENTVS AVG.

(BMClll Hadrian no. 1120)
to put in an appearance. Servianus is unlikely to have been enthusiastic about

Hadrian's accession to power. Still, his daughter Julia Paulina was Hadrian's niece,
his son-in-law Fuscus, consul with Hadrian earlier in this year, was the heir
apparent - and as Emperor Hadrian treated Servianus with studied deference. 3
Nineteen years before the city had seen Trajan's first adventus as Emperor, 'so
long awaited and longed for', as Pliny lovingly described it: the streets packed,
cheers and rejoicing everywhere, delight as he embraced the senators, singled out
the leading knights to greet them by name, moved among the people, letting
himself be jostled by the crowd. Hadrian was to cultivate civilitasr. 'He did every-
thing in the style of a private citizen, the HA says of his first stay at Rome,
and, in general comment on his demeanour in a later passage, reports that 'in
conversation even with people of the humblest class he acted very much as an
ordinary citizen, denouncing those who - as if they would preserve the Princeps'
high eminence - tried to begrudge him this pleasure in human nature.' The
circumstances in 118 were very different. All the same, it was in Hadrian's nature,
as well as in his own interest, to comport himself as a civilis princeps.A
The plebs would be in attendance in large numbers, there is no question. To
be sure, largess had already been distributed in Hadrian's absence, three gold
pieces a head. But further bounty would be hoped for, and it was deemed
expedient: the public mood was still very ugly after the killing of the four
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consulars. Tacitus, in the Annals that he was then composing, called the murder
of Agrippa Postumus 'the first crime of the new principate' - of Tiberius. He was
surely thinking of Hadrian when he wrote these words - and was doubtless not
alone in fearing that more and worse might follow. If Hadrian did not sense it
from the demeanour of Senate and People, Verus and Similis and the Augustae
no doubt made clear to him what the situation was. 'To dispel the rumours
about himself he gave the people a double congiarium, in person (praesens)\
reports the HA. In other words, this time it was six aurei a head. A coin issue
from the summer shows Hadrian on a platform, seated in his chair of state,
while an official distributes money: liberalitas Aug., imperial generosity - rather
than congiarium, merely largess - was proclaimed by the coin legend. 5
Hadrian would at any rate not emulate Tiberius' tight-fistedness. This was
only the first in a series of measures to buy back the good will dissipated by the
death of Nigrinus and the others. Money alone would not be enough to win
round the Senate. Hence perhaps his attendance at the Arvals' rituals within
hours of his arrival, although the Brethren were mostly far from being distin-
guished or influential. Nor were they numerous - and in any case there were two
vacancies to fill. As it happens, the records of the Arval Brethren show that letters
from Trajan recommending persons to fill gaps in the college were only now
delivered. The co-options were dealt with during the next few weeks. Hosidius
Geta and the younger Haterius Nepos, the two new Brethren, had probably been
in the east and on Hadrian's staff on the long journey back to Rome. 6
Hadrian had to face the House. It is likely enough that the consul Bassus
summoned a meeting for dawn on the next day, 10 July, at any rate within a
short time of the adventus. It had, of course, been the Senate itself that had
ordered the executions. That no doubt made matters worse. Twenty-five years
before, as Tacitus had bitterly recalled, 'it was our hands that led Helvidius to
prison, we were shamed by the sight of Mauricus and Rusticus, Senecio's inno-
cent blood was poured out on us - us senators, who had had to vote the death
penalty for Domitian's victims. 7
Hadrian was to assert in his autobiography that the four had been killed
against his will; and he put the blame on Attianus. According to Dio, Hadrian
'was so sensitive about what was being rumoured that he spoke in his own
defence and declared on oath that he had not ordered their deaths.' This must
be a version of Hadrian's statement to the Senate in July 118. The HA has a
slight variation: 'before the Senate he made excuses for what had been done and
swore an oath that he would never punish a senator except in accordance with
a vote of the Senate.' It is perfectly plausible that he swore twice, first that he
had not ordered the four to be killed, second that he would not punish any
senator without the Senate's vote. This latter oath - first firmly attested for
Nerva in 96 - had already become traditional. But it cannot have had more than
token significance. Even had he already sworn it straight after becoming
Emperor, the previous August, it would not have prevented the executions: the
Senate had ordered them. 8
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As for Attianus, who had forced the senators to impose the death penalty, he
had been dismissed, but hardly disgraced. Hadrian made him a senator, with
consular rank, and told him that there was no greater honour he could bestow.
The old man is unlikely to have attended the Senate after his ennoblement. He
probably sulked on one of his estates, at Praeneste, or on Elba, if not back in
Baetica. Attianus already had a successor. But Turbo was still with the Danube
armies. The other Prefect, Similis, was old too, and weary, perhaps uneasy at the
thought of serving Hadrian. He submitted his resignation, which was not at
once accepted. Hadrian was obviously reluctant to lose him. 9
Similis, like Turbo, had risen from the centurionate. His successor was of
quite different mould, the cultivated Septicius Clarus, the friend of Pliny to
whom the nine books of Letters had been dedicated. As Pliny had written,
Septicius had often urged him to collect and publish these pieces. Nothing
whatever is known about Septicius' previous career. He had no doubt seen mil-
itary service as an equestrian officer in his youth, and must have held several
appointments of high rank. It would be no surprise if he turned out to have been
imperial Secretary, ab epistulis. However this may be, a new holder of that post
would shortly take office, promoted from the directorship of the imperial
libraries. It was another, younger, friend of Pliny, Suetonius Tranquillus, who
was already enjoying a reputation as a scholar. His Lives of Famous Men had been
published at least ten years earlier and he no doubt owed his first two appoint-
ments, as a studiis and a bibliothecis, to the reputation the work had brought
him. Hadrian presumably thought that Suetonius and Septicius would be
congenial as well as useful members of his team. Suetonius was perhaps already
launched on a new literary work, Lives of the Caesars - competition for Tacitus'
Annales. But the Caesars would begin with the Dictator and Augustus, not
covered by Tacitus. Suetonius would dedicate the first Lives to Septicius Clarus.
He also took pains to win the Emperor's favour. A scholarly aside early in the
Life of Augustus, to demonstrate that the future Emperor had had the additional
name 'Thurinus' as a boy, quotes as evidence a tiny bronze bust (imaguncula)
of the boy Octavius, with a rusty inscription in iron letters. 'It was once in my
possession', he adds, 'but I have presented it to the Princeps, who has placed it
among the household gods {Lares) in his bedroom.' 10
This is one of many signs of Hadrian's pronounced devotion to Augustus.
When the Arval Brethren received a written communication from Hadrian in
February 118, 'the tablets were opened, sealed with the signum impressed by a
head of Augustus.' In other words, Hadrian had a portrait of the first Princeps
on his signet-ring. It is not fanciful to detect here and there, in the Divus
Augustus, a subtle attempt to justify Hadrian's renunciation of expansion.
Indeed, Suetonius credits Augustus with a purely pacific policy, of a suspiciously
Hadrianic character. To be sure, at the end of his reign Augustus was obliged to
renounce expansion. But he had practised it for several decades first.11 Hadrian
may have been glad enough to receive this literary support. He certainly had to
explain publicly what he had done. The abandonment of 'the many provinces
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acquired by Trajan' had not been well received. No doubt this remark refers
to the territories beyond the Lower Danube as well as to Armenia and
Mesopotamia. At any rate, Hadrian's attempt at justification only made matters
worse. It may have been now that he quoted the Elder Cato's speech on what
to do about Macedonia: that may have been irritating enough for some of his
audience. But the HA comments here that because 'he pretended that all the
measures which he had realised were unpopular had been taken in accordance
with secret instructions from Trajan, the reaction was even more bitter.' 12
Characteristically, the HA lumps together with this important policy change
a minor action affecting Rome itself, that was also badly received: the demolition
of a theatre erected by Trajan on the Campus Martius - this too was justified
by appeal to Trajan's orders. In fact, Hadrian had ambitious building plans of
his own, not least for the Campus Martius. The plebs, whose favour he was
apparently forfeiting, would soon benefit from a construction programme that
would rival even Trajan's. Besides, there were more immediate ways to win over
the people of Rome. An action mentioned by no literary source may be inferred
from coins of 118 and 119: a supplementary corn distribution. 13 But a whole
series of measures was presently launched which was designed to conciliate all
sectors of society. Hadrian had already in the previous autumn 'waived for
Italy the crown gold [the traditional Voluntary' contribution offered to a new
emperor] and reduced the sums paid by the provinces - at the same time seeking
to court popularity by a carefully worded exposition of the problems of the
public treasury.' Now that he was face to face with public opinion in the capital,
he decided that large outlays were essential, whatever the state of the imperial
finances.14
Marius Maximus, the main source of the HA, must have supplied copious
detail, and much of it seems to be reproduced in the vita HadrianL The first
measure - taken 'immediately' - was presumably a response to what Hadrian
had probably noticed again and again during his eight months' journey across a
dozen provinces and Italy itself. Requisitioning of transport and accommodation
for those travelling on official business placed an intolerable burden on local
communities. 'He organised a transport service [cursus) funded by the fiscus, so
that the magistrates should not be weighed down by this charge.' It was not a
new problem. The cursus publicus instituted by Augustus had regularly created
difficulties - and Hadrian's solution was probably little more than window-
dressing. For the moment it would alleviate concern. 15
Much more important - and effective - was a sweeping amnesty for tax
arrears. 'Neglecting nothing in his effort to win popularity, he remitted to
private debtors in the city and in Italy an immense sum of money which was
owed to the fiscus and did the same for huge arrears from the provinces too. To
reinforce confidence, the tax documents (syngrafi) were publicly burned in
Trajan's Forum.' Such is the vitas version, confirmed and amplified by other
sources. Dio too reports the measure, adding that the period covered was fifteen
years, that is the years 104-18 inclusive. The response was extremely favourable.
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At Rome Senate and People jointly erected a monument in the place where the
ceremonial burning had taken place. O n the base Hadrian was honoured as 'the
first of all principes and the only one who, by remitting nine hundred million
sesterces owed to the fiscus, provided security not merely for his present citizens
but also for their descendants by this generosity.' The coins would in due course
celebrate the act again: 'nine million HS of outstanding debts cancelled' ran the
legend, and a lictor is shown setting fire to a pile of tax-records, watched by three
gratified taxpayers. A fine relief has even survived, showing a group of soldiers
carrying the records past a portico. It was perhaps part of the monument in
Trajan's Forum from which the inscription also came. The effusive gratitude
expressed in that dedication was perfectly appropriate. An analysis of economic
activity in the second century has concluded that Hadrian's measure provided a
needed stimulus, with beneficial consequences over many years. People were
encouraged to spend, and they did. 16
Further announcements followed - it may well be that Marius Maximus had
access to a collection of speeches by Hadrian, before the Senate and indeed before
the People. But several of these measures could have been made known on a single
occasion. The property of condemned persons was to be assigned, not to the 'privy
purse' (fiscus privatus), but to the public treasury (aerarium publicum). It may
be that the vita or its source reproduced the name of the former department
Plate 8 The burning of the tax debt tablets

(relief from Rome now at Chatsworth House, Derbyshire)
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anachronistically, but the sense is clear enough, and the intention. It was an answer
to any who might have been muttering that the palace might still profit from the
four consulars, even if Hadrian denied responsibility for their deaths. Another
measure directly benefited a good many individual senators: those whose property
rating had, through no fault of their own, fallen below the necessary minimum
to maintain their membership, received a suitable subsidy, in accordance with the
number of their children - some of them enjoyed this support for the rest of their
lives, the vita reported. This would win gratitude from 'backbenchers'. Funds were
also made available to office-holders - not merely to his friends, to help defray
their expenses: the reference is to the games which magistrates of the Roman
People were obliged to mount, a costly obligation. (Hadrian's own ludi praetorii,
eleven years earlier, had been paid for by Trajan.) A number of women were
also 'assisted with expenses to keep up their position', widows or daughters of
distinguished senators, perhaps. 17
A measure to reinforce the child-support scheme created by Trajan, the
alimenta, was a subtle way to honour his adoptive father's memory and reinforce
his own position in Italy (which alone benefited). He raised the age-limit for
payments to 14 for girls (the age of marriage) and 18 for boys. The coins duly
put the message across: Hadrian is shown seated on the sella curulis extending
his right arm towards Italia, who stands before him, one child on her left arm,
another beside her. Instead of a direct mention of the alimenta, the legend
proclaims 'liberty restored', echoing Pliny's welcome for the original programme
- 'It is a great thing indeed to have children in the hope of receiving alimenta
and congiaria, a. greater thing when there is hope of liberty and security.' 18
The financial benefits of Hadrians inaugural programme were indeed
thoroughly emphasised by the coinage. Securitas Augusti recalls the inscription
of thanks for the tax remission, which would make this and future generations
securos. In the next two years, by then perhaps confident that the policy was
already bearing fruit, Hadrian could let himself be called restorer (restitutor) and
even 'enricher' (locupletator) of the world. 19
A triumph for the Parthian victories had been offered to Hadrian in the
autumn and, very properly, refused; and he himself had proposed Trajan's
deification. Now that Hadrian was back the deification could be ceremonially
carried through. No details are recorded, except that the ashes of the dead
Imperator were deposited in the base of his great Column, an unusual distinc-
tion, and contrary to Roman practice. The Tomb of Augustus on the Campus
Martius was now full anyway (room had been found there for Nerva's remains).
As for the triumph, the decision was taken - it seems somewhat bizarre - to hold
a posthumous one for Trajan himself (his third). Senate and army paraded along
the triumphal way with a statue of the deified conqueror. Was this supposed to
assuage the bitterness engendered by the surrender of Trajan's conquests? In all
truth, the Parthian expedition had turned into a catastrophe well before Trajan
expired. All the same, games were held - and were to be repeated annually, the
ludi Parthici, with one of the praetors regularly assigned to preside. It may have
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been during the ceremonies of summer 118 that 'in honour of Trajan he ordered
that balsam and saffron should flow over the steps of the theatre.' The decision
was certainly now implemented to erect a temple to the deified Trajan. It may
also only now have been decided - by Hadrian himself - to decorate the
Column with a continuous frieze celebrating the Dacian wars. 20
Other 'games in the circus were voted' - the Senate may, perhaps, have
proposed thus to celebrate the first anniversary of his accession on 11 August.
But Hadrian 'spurned' the offer, says the HA. He made an exception, however,
for his forty-third birthday, on 24 January 119. A gladiatorial show was put
on which lasted for six successive days, with a thousand wild beasts being
slaughtered. Dio adds the detail that one hundred lions and one hundred
lionesses were among them, an expensive business; but Hadrian was aware what
the people needed. Panem et circenses, bread and games, that is all that the once
sovereign Roman People cared about, as a contemporary satirist - Juvenal -
would shortly comment. Corn had been distributed already, now came the
games. Juvenal himself affected to be indifferent to the excitements of the ludi:
'let the young men watch', he would rather soak his wrinkled skin in the spring
sunshine at home. 2 1
As for Hadrian, the HA asserts, in a summary of his conduct as Emperor, that
'he often watched the gladiators.' Dio has an extended anecdote on this topic.
When the crowd was baying loudly at a gladiatorial contest, the Emperor
ordered a herald to reject their demand with the cry for 'Silence'. That had been
Domitian's way, as the herald and the crowd will have known. The tactful herald
simply raised his hand without uttering the word and the shouting ceased. 'His
wish', responded the herald. Hadrian was grateful to the man, not angry. To
have been perceived as a new Domitian would have been a serious setback. 22
A man who had served in the east, as procurator of the short-lived province
of Greater Armenia, the elder Haterius Nepos, had recently become procurator
of the ludus magnus, in charge of training gladiators for imperial occasions. The
startling rise of Haterius Nepos offers an insight into Hadrian's situation at this
time: he had to rely on a few trusted men. Haterius, although mentioned in no
written source, was certainly one of them - and his son of the same name,
already launched on a senatorial career, enjoyed Hadrian's favour. By August of
119 the elder Haterius had become Prefect of Egypt - yet his career inscription
from his home town, Umbrian Fulginiae, lists no fewer than five posts between
his service in Armenia Maior, which cannot have begun before 114, and the
Egyptian prefecture. He might have come back to Rome from Armenia to take
charge of the gladiators before the end of the Parthian war, and at the latest in
the previous autumn. But four further posts are listed between the ludus magnus
and Egypt. Several of them must have been held simultaneously, for example
'the imperial inheritances' (hereditates) and the posts a censibus and a libellis.
Even so, Haterius cannot have devoted more than a few months to these duties
- important as they were, particularly the libelli, petitions to the Emperor, of
which there will have been a great flood at the start of the reign. Before going
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to Egypt Haterius had also served as Prefect of the vigiles, in charge of the
capital's security at night and of fire prevention. Until Marcius Turbo returned,
it may be guessed, Haterius Nepos was there to use a strong hand, if it was
needed. 23
There is not much more that can be gleaned about the holders of posts at
Rome in 118-19: the other new Guard Prefect, Septicius Clarus, and the ab
epistulis Suetonius, have already been mentioned. As for the major army
commands, the particularly sensitive areas were in safe hands. Catilius Severus
still held Syria, Bruttius Praesens was in Cappadocia, Ummidius Quadratus had
just taken over Moesia Inferior. Further, Minicius Natalis may have stayed on in
Pannonia Superior for some months, although he had been there for over five
years. But Turbo's special command in Dacia and Pannonia Inferior is likely
to have terminated at the latest early in 119. Turbo and Natalis may have
both recommended the man who took over the major part of Trajan's Dacia,
now redesignated Dacia Superior. A novus homo from the colonia of Aequum
in Turbo's home province Dalmatia, Sex. Julius Severus, got the job of legate,
commanding the single legion left in Dacia, XIII Gemina, as well as being
governor, on the model of Pannonia Inferior. That province probably went to
L. Cornelius Latinianus, although his presence there is not exactly dated. Julius
Severus is first attested in Dacia on 20 June 120 - and would stay there a
long time; but he had probably already taken up the post in 119. He had been
commanding the legion XIV Gemina in Upper Pannonia. Of course, he may
not have needed to be pushed forward by Natalis, his chief, or by Turbo. When
Hadrian was in Pannonia, he could himself have observed and approved Severus
- and, for that matter, Severus' cursus honorum shows that he had been favoured
from the start. A dozen years later, he would be regarded as 'the foremost among
Hadrian's leading generals'. 24
There was still fighting in Britain, so it seems: Pompeius Falco was engaged
against the rebels in the north of the province. In Egypt Rammius Martialis
was coping with the aftermath of the Jewish uprising. Back in November of 117,
Martialis had received a request for leave from the district administrator
(strategus) of Apollinopolis-Heptacomias. 'Because of the attack by the unholy
Jews', the official told the Prefect, 'practically all my property in the villages of the
Hermoupolite nome and in the metropolis needs my attention.' Other papyri refer
to damage caused by the rising - and to the confiscation of Jewish property.
Further documents from Egypt indicate that Hadrian issued an order within the
first few months of his reign granting tax-alleviation to cultivators of royal
land. As for the aftermath of the Jewish uprising, when he returned to Rome
Hadrian probably had to listen to accusations and counter-accusations from
Jewish and Greek delegations sent from Alexandria. At any rate, an unofficial -
probably fictional - account of such a hearing was later in circulation. 25
During the two and three-quarter years that followed his return, Hadrian
must have been reflecting on the best means of ensuring stability and security
for the empire; and he no doubt early on conceived the plan to see all the
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provinces for himself. But for the time being it was better to remain in Rome,
to stamp his authority on the capital. He himself would be consul again, for the
third time, in 119, and would actually carry out the traditional duties for several
months. His first colleague was Dasumius Rusticus, a kinsman of a kind - albeit
only by adoption into the Dasumii, the Cordoban family related to Hadrian. Of
the suffect consuls, Plato rius Nepos, Hadrian's friend, enjoyed the distinction of
replacing Rusticus and serving alongside the Emperor. Nepos may, indeed, have
remained in his province of Thrace during his consulship, and have proceeded
directly from there to his next province, Lower Germany. 26
After his third consulship Hadrian never held the office again, an interesting
decision: it was a studied contrast to the hogging of the fasces by the Flavian
dynasty - and, one might add, to a lesser extent by Trajan, who had held five
consulships as Emperor. As consul for the third time, Hadrian served until
the end of April and frequently administered justice in that capacity, so the HA
reports, in a passage listing examples of his conciliatory posture towards the
Senate. When he was in the city, or nearby, he always attended the regular sittings
(senatus legitimus), and frequently went to official functions of the consuls and
praetors. Sometimes he would join the consuls when they were sitting as judges,
Dio adds, and he showed them honour at the horse-races. If hearing cases as
Princeps (that is, rather than when consul), he would invite senators and equites
to join him in his consilium and deliver his verdict only after all had offered
their views. But equites were debarred from giving judgement on senators.
He denounced those predecessors who had showed insufficient deference to the
Senate. Leading senators were invited to the palace - 'admitted to the intimacy of
the imperial majesty', as the HA rather pompously phrases it. Dio says that 'both
in Rome and when abroad he always kept the noblest men about him and used
to join them for banquets; often he would have three persons riding with him in
his carriage.' By the same token, he frequently accepted invitations to dinner
from friends - occasions for all manner of discussions, Dio notes. He would
visit them several times a day if they were ill - including some who were only
knights or freedmen, the HA stresses, reviving them with sympathetic words -
and always invited them back to dinner with himself. 'He did everything in the
style of a private citizen', the HA concludes. 27
In a later passage, already quoted, it is emphasised that this openness was also
displayed towards the common people, 'even with the humblest he acted very
much as an ordinary citizen.' What survives of Dio's account, already quoted
from in part, is on similar lines to that of the HA - Dio may well have drawn
on the same source. He too stresses the partnership with the Senate and
Hadrian's manifest aim to show himself a civilis princeps. He notes that when
Hadrian was holding court, whether in the palace, the Forum or elsewhere, it
was 'from a raised tribunal, so that what was transacted was in the public
domain.' He took pains to avoid excessive formality, for this reason returning to
the palace in a litter, 'so as not to put anyone to the trouble of accompanying
him.' Also 'to spare people a burdensome duty', he accepted no callers on dies
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religiosi (when there were no official engagements). No one should have been
left in any doubt: he did not want to be a despot. Hadrian made clear, the HA
says, in frequent speeches both to the Senate and to the People (in contione) that
he was their servant: he would administer the commonwealth in the conscious-
ness that the state belonged to the people and was not his property. 28
In this section on Hadrian's first years at Rome the HA asserts that after 'he
had been consul for the third time, he appointed a great many to a third consul-
ship and bestowed the honour of a second consulship on an immense number.'
The author has either misunderstood or exaggerated something in his source.
Only two men received a third consulship from Hadrian, one less than under
Trajan. Still, that was remarkable enough, considering that Hadrian himself held
no further consulship after 119. Furthermore, no one other than emperors or
Caesars was to have such an honour again for more than three hundred years.
As for second consulships, this considerable distinction, enjoyed by more than
a dozen senators in the previous reign (some only as suffects), went to only five
men under Hadrian. The first was Catilius Severus, in 120, and Annius Verus
followed in 121. Verus got a third consulship in 126, and there were three more
iterations, in 128 and 129. That is all, apart from Servianus' long-delayed third
tenure, in 134 - which suggests that the chosen few had special significance. It
may mean, for one thing, that Hadrian did not have many real friends and allies
among the highest echelons. Besides which, he may have been reluctant to
boost, by such a distinction, persons who might conceive dangerous ambitions.
The last consul iterum from Trajan's reign had been Publilius Celsus, in 113, the
one before him his alleged fellow-conspirator Palma, in 109. And Laberius
Maximus, who had actually held his second consulship as Trajan's colleague,
back in 103, was presumably still in his place of exile. Their second consulships
had gone to their heads, it might be thought. 29
It could be that Marius Maximus reported the designation of Catilius Severus
in comment on the year 119, adding remarks which the HA transmitted in
inflated form on Hadrian's policy regarding the consulship. At any rate, Hadrian
had a special debt to Catilius, for crucial support in August 117 and the months
that followed. Now he had his reward, a second consulship only ten years after
his first. Catilius Severus was from a provincial colonia, but, unlike so many of
the new elite, who came from the western provinces, he was an easterner: his
home was Apamea in Bithynia. His career was at first far from distinguished,
although he was not exactly a parvenu and he had some social graces. At least
Pliny had once accepted an invitation to dinner from him — on condition that
it be a brief and frugal meal, with philosophical conversation (in moderation).
After a long series of posts, Catilius' career suddenly accelerated, helped by an
advantageous marriage - to Dasumia, the widow of the immensely wealthy
Domitius Tullus, as has been plausibly conjectured. Hadrian's friendship may
have been useful too. The marriage (no doubt his second) would in due course
attach Catilius to a powerful nexus of families, at the centre of which was the
City Prefect Annius Verus. It was no coincidence that the other consul of 120
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was a son-in-law of Verus, Aurelius Antoninus. Verus himself gained his own
second consulship the next year. This had come to be a customary accolade for
City Prefects, even if Verus' predecessor Baebius Macer, abruptly removed for
dangerous unreliability in September 117, had been denied it. The remarkable
thing about Verus is that five years after his second consulship, in 126, he, rather
than Servianus, held the fasces a third time. Servianus was treated by Hadrian
with ostentatious respect, but it was Verus and Verus' kin who enjoyed Hadrian's
confidence. 30
Hadrian may have made plans as early as 119 to leave the capital, so at least
it has been inferred from coins of this year with the legend Fort(una) red(ux).
The intended destination was the western provinces, other coin issues seem to
suggest. Hercules of Gades could indicate that Spain was on the agenda, but
Britain was obviously causing concern: sestertii show the personified province
sitting on a rock, with shield and lance. The precise message that this somewhat
doleful Britannia was intended to convey is not entirely clear. Victory was being
proclaimed on other coins, with both the goddess herself and related images:
Mars the Avenger, Augustan Peace, Jupiter the Victor, Victorious Rome. The
Alexandrian mint took up the theme in its issues in the Egyptian year beginning
late August 119: the goddess Nike's shield bears the words 'Victory to Caesar'.
This should mean personal participation by Hadrian, which also applies to a
coin from the mint at Rome hailing the virtus Augusti, the personal manly virtue
of the ruler. What really lies behind all this is another matter: the stamping out
of the British revolt has been suggested. More likely perhaps is the restoration
of order on the Danube: the end of Marcius Turbo's special mission would mean
business as usual in that quarter. Furthermore, Hadrian had actually taken a
personal part in what could be called a war against the Sarmatians. In any case,
Britannia reappears on the coinage of 120. The odds are that the rebellion was
not yet over - and Hadrian may have toyed with the idea of going to deal with
it himself.31
Instead of taking off for the provinces, Hadrian made do for the time being
with a trip to Campania, what Tiberius had called a peregrinatio suburbans
Tacitus reports - when he went there, instead of to Gaul, at the time of the great
uprising. Perhaps the historian was conscious of a parallel with Hadrian: going
to Campania instead of crushing the rebellious Britons in person. Apparent
echoes of Hadrian crop up in the Annals again and again, not least in the
Tiberian books. It has to be reiterated that Tacitus could perfectly well have been
composing the greater part of the Annals after Hadrian became Emperor - he
was, after all, little more than sixty in the year 119. A second imperial visit to
Campania gets more detailed mention in the fourth book of the Annals, under
the year 26. The stress there is on predictions by astrologers - which proved to
be correct - that Tiberius would never return. Tiberius himself was an expert in
astrology and an addict. So was Hadrian, as is repeatedly illustrated by the HA,
reproducing Marius Maximus. It is a legitimate speculation that astrologers were
busy with such forecasts in 119. If so, Hadrian, better informed than the experts
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in this as in other branches of learning and science, will have cheerfully ignored
them. 32
That Campania was chosen for an excursion is significant in another respect.
The region, or at least Neapolis, still lovingly preserved its Hellenic identity;
there at least Hadrian could indulge his passion for things Greek. The HA does
not offer much detail: 'He gave support to all its towns by benefactions and
largess, attaching all the leading men to his friendship.' Inscriptions from the
year 121 presumably register the completion of public works set in motion by
this visit. In a later passage there is brief mention of something more specific:
he held office as demarch at Naples, no date being given. It might, of course,
have been merely honorific, in absentia, at any time in the reign. But just as he
had served as archon at Athens seven or eight years earlier, it is not unlikely that
he honoured the Campanian Greeks, at least for a week or two, by holding the
chief magistracy at Neapolis. 33
The Greeks will have been in Hadrian's thoughts anyway, wherever he was
- no emperor could stem the constant flow of embassies and petitions from
cities and individuals all over the empire, but none were so assiduous and
insistent as those in the eastern Mediterranean. He had already, for example, sent
two separate replies to Delphi the previous year, which chance has preserved, a
mere fraction of what must have been thousands of such letters. In 119 he
wrote, for the second time, to the council and people of Aphrodisias in Caria,
a city allied to Rome for centuries. He had already confirmed their 'freedom
and autonomy'. Now he had to assure them that they were also immune from
paying the tax on nails; he had written to the procurator Claudius Agrippinus,
who was to instruct the nail-tax farmer to stay away from Aphrodisias. 34
Letters like this will not have caused either Hadrian or his ab epistulis much
effort or exertion. The business could of course have been dealt with by freed-
men or slave clerks drafting the reply on standard lines once the incoming mail
had been read to him and the response decided. For all that, Hadrian probably
dealt with much correspondence himself. He was proverbially capable of
'writing, dictating, listening, and conversing with friends at one and the same
time'. He also had a phenomenal memory, could quote extensively from books
that he had just read (even ones that most people had never heard of), and never
forgot a name, veterans that he had discharged from the army included. 35
A more substantial matter, affecting sons of soldiers who had died on service,
and sons of veterans, occupied his attention in the summer of 119. It is a pleasing
thought that the new ab epistulis Suetonius may have played some modest part in
composing Hadrian's letter, which was posted in the fortress of the Egyptian
legions III Cyrenaica and XXII Deiotariana on 4 August 119. Presumably he had
received an enquiry from the Prefect, Rammius Martialis. (Soon after the reply
arrived Rammius would be replaced by Haterius Nepos.)
I am well aware, my dear Rammius, that those whom their parents have
brought up as their offspring during their time of military service have
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been denied access to the paternal property. Now this does not seem harsh:
the men themselves have acted contrary to military discipline' [soldiers
were debarred from marriage]. But I very gladly take the opportunity of
interpreting in a more humane way the rather strict rule laid down by the
emperors before myself.
Veterans are not referred to specifically until the end of the letter; and the precise
interpretation of what the change meant is not entirely straightforward. It was
a modest enough measure: illegitimate sons could still not become the principal
heirs - as if they were legitimate - but were nevertheless granted a claim on their
fathers' property. Those who had no competition from legally born brothers
or from uncles would benefit. Two years later, disciplina militaris - here, in the
Greek version, stratiotike didache - was to be overhauled drastically. For the
present, it was desirable to conciliate the soldiers, not least when there had been
recent fighting and considerable casualties. 'You should make this benefit of
mine for soldiers and veterans public', the letter concludes, 'not so that I may
gain credit in their eyes, but so that they make use of it if they act amiss.' If
the word translated 'gain credit' really means that (an alternative has been
suggested), Hadrian was being disingenuous. The ruling would not have been
confined to Egypt, in any case, but applied to all soldiers and to all legionary
veterans - by a seeming paradox, sons of veterans of the non-citizen auxilia had
a more favoured position. 36
Also in the summer of 119, Hadrian had an enquiry from Macedonia.
Terentius Gentianus, son of Trajan's marshal Scaurianus, serving there with
special powers and the title censitor, had written to ask what punishments
were appropriate for the offence of moving boundary stones. Hadrian's reply,
composed on 17 August, lays down that the penalty should depend on the rank
of the offender - if persons of standing have done it, it is obviously to grab other
people's land and they should be banished - for a lengthy term if still young.
Servants should only receive two years hard labour - and if they simply stole the
stones or moved them through ignorance, a beating would suffice.37
The year was marked by the death of two prominent persons. An aged Stoic
philosopher, Euphrates of Tyre, sought and gained Hadrian's permission to take
his own life. The Emperor 'permitted him to drink hemlock in consideration of
his extreme age and his malady', Dio reported. Euphrates had certainly been
around for a very long time - Pliny had first met him in Syria when serving as
military tribune nearly forty years before, and had 'taken pains to win his affec-
tion'. Euphrates had been at Rome for decades - soon after Trajan's accession,
Pliny told a friend that 'if ever liberal studies flourished in our city, now is the
time of their greatest flowering - I need only name the philosopher Euphrates.'
He enlarged on the charms of the tall, white-bearded and distinguished sage and
his wholly blameless life. A century later Philostratus would denounce Euphrates
for having fawned on the powerful and for accumulating vast wealth as a result.
That would not necessarily have damaged his standing in the eyes of Pliny, who
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had a proper respect for money and was himself a skilled flatterer. Hadrian had
a leaning towards philosophers - Epictetus, another aged survivor and perhaps
still alive in his retreat at Nicopolis, was said to have been his friend. But it is
not recorded whether Hadrian had been one of the powerful persons captivated,
like Pliny, by Euphrates' subtle arguments, profound reasoning and language
which echoed the sublimity and richness of Plato. Other, younger philosophers
were now vying for attention at Rome, including a remarkable specimen from
Gallic Arelate (Aries), Favorinus, who would in due course have dealings with
Hadrian. 38
The second death affected Hadrian more directly, and he felt it keenly. His
'most-beloved mother-in-law' - so he called her - Trajan's niece, and thus his
cousin by adoption, the Augusta Matidia, died in December 119. Hadrian
delivered the funeral address, ascribing to her a remarkable string of qualities.
He was overcome and upset, as he said, the distressing image of her in her last
illness still fresh in his mind, and he could not do justice to all her virtues. But
he praised her combination of gentleness and gravity, her chastity combined
with great beauty, her tenderness, modesty, amiability to all, and family loyalty.
His sincerity cannot be doubted in this speech, of which the text was engraved
at Tibur. Matidia had perhaps expired at this fashionable watering-place. The
family had probably had a country seat there for a long time, which Hadrian
was to favour and extend enormously. 39
Matidia had been widowed as a young woman and lived at court, treated by
Trajan like a daughter. She had been honoured with the name or title 'Augusta'
when her mother Marciana was declared a 'diva. It seems probable, although
direct evidence is lacking, that Hadrian now followed the precedent set by Trajan
and granted Sabina the name Augusta. Still, although he mentioned 'my Sabina'
in the funeral speech for her mother, Hadrian's empress was to remain for the
most part in the background. The Dowager Plotina, now by the act of adoption
Hadrian's mother, was still alive, and probably influential, although after the first
few months of the reign she had disappeared from view, as far as the imperial
coinage, on which Matidia had featured prominently, is concerned. Coins also
proclaimed Matidia's deification. The HA registers in a single sentence, as the last
item in this more or less chronological narrative of Hadrian's first two years, his
granting of 'special honours to his mother-in-law, with gladiatorial games and
other ceremonies'. In a later passage summarising his shows and building
at Rome, there is the further statement that 'after other enormous delights, he
presented the people with spices in honour of his mother-in-law.' There happens
to be record of the date: on 23 December 119 the magister of the Arval Brethren
in the name of the college marked the consecratio Matidiae Aug with 2 pounds
of perfume and 50 pounds of incense. 40
Records of the Arvals for the year 120 are also preserved, but supply no
information on out-of-the-ordinary events. As normal, and was done all over the
empire, on 3 January they assembled on the Capitol - seven of the twelve
Brethren were there, the five others, and Hadrian, the supernumerary thirteenth,
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were absent - to pronounce the vows for the health and safety (salus) of the
Emperor. Four days later, in the portico of the Temple of Concord, only five of
the fratres were there as the magister announced the customary annual sacrifice
on 27 May to the Dea Dia, with prayers for Hadrian and all his house, for the
Roman People and for themselves. O n 7 February they had to meet to co-opt a
new member. Old Bittius Proculus had expired and Hadrian nominated one
Manlius Carbo. His letter was opened by the magister, after solemn prayers. The
Acta describe the Emperor's seal, as was the case with Trajan's letter received the
previous year. Trajan's was a mythological figure, Marsyas, a symbol of liberty
and associated with the family of his mother, the Marcii. Hadrian, as already
mentioned, had the head of Augustus, not a casual choice. There may have been
some, such as Tacitus, who looked on Hadrian as another Tiberius, indeed a
Nero or a Domitian. Whether or not Hadrian was aware of such subversive
views, he would soon show unmistakable signs of wishing to model himself on
the first Princeps. As already indicated, his ab epistulis, busy with his vitae
Caesarum, seems to have been aware of Hadrian's thinking: Suetonius' Divus
Augustus incorporates what can be read as a Hadrianic interpretation of
Augustan policy, a rewriting of history indeed. 41
Hadrian's decision to remain in Rome throughout 120 and into the spring of
121, contrary perhaps to his own inclinations, is hardly surprising. O n one esti-
mate, it was simply to make certain that his position was unchallengeable. Put
another way, it would allow Rome to benefit from the imperial presence - after
all, Trajan had left the capital for ever in early autumn 113, over the next four
years no member of the imperial house had been seen there, no emperor for
nearly five. But whether Hadrian was at the capital or on the move, there was
work to be done. His responses to requests from the Greeks during these years
happen to be preserved in three cases. The Gerusia of Ephesus, a college of older
men entrusted with protecting the shrine of Artemis, upholding Ephesian
traditions and administering funds associated with the cults, had had difficulty
in recovering moneys. The proconsul of Asia for the year 119-20, Mettius
Modestus, had found in favour of the Gerusia, but they sent an ambassador to
Hadrian all the same. He simply affirmed his approval of Modestus' decision
and sent a copy of the college's resolution to the new proconsul, Cornelius
Priscus, 'who will appoint someone to collect funds owing in future cases.' 42
That he could be exasperated by cases sent to him is apparent in a reply from
the year 121, later quoted in a dossier about a property dispute at Tebtunis in
Egypt. Hadrian had already given a reply; but was appealed to again. 'It was just
the other day that I replied to you that my decision is helpful to you - and I
think that Philotera, being a woman of rank and most favourably known to me,
will do you no injustice, especially as she knows that unjust possession has no
validity.' At this point his impatience breaks through - 'but you want to burden
me with matters which are not in dispute.' 43
The third case was one which Hadrian would in any case have found more
interesting and would certainly have dealt with sympathetically had he been
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appealed to direct. As it was, he could hardly refuse, for the petitioners, the
School of Epicurean philosophy at Athens, had enlisted the Dowager Empress as
their intermediary. Her letter to Hadrian, with his reply, both in Latin, together
with Plotina's letter in Greek to the School, were set up on slabs of Pentelic
marble. 'What interest I have in the sect of Epicurus, you know very well, my
Lord', she began. The headship of the School was transmitted by the testament
of the incumbent. It turns out that the succession had been restricted to Roman
citizens, at first sight a surprising state of affairs - Athens was, after all, a free city.
Presumably the rule had been laid down for good reason. The current head, one
Popillius Theotimus, had a non-citizen in mind as his successor or at least wanted
to be free to choose such a person and to make his will in Greek. Hadrian
assented to all the details: Theotimus himself and future heads of the Epicureans
would be free to choose a successor, irrespective of his citizenship.
Plotina sent the correspondence with an effusive covering letter: 'Plotina to all
the friends, Greeting. We have what we were so eager to obtain.' Either a Hellene
or a Roman could preside over the School. T o r this fine grant of authority, we
owe a debt of gratitude to him who is in truth the benefactor and overseer of all
culture and therefore an emperor most worthy of reverence, and to me very dear
in every way as both an outstanding guardian and a loyal son.' She went on to
stress that the privilege must not be abused, the chosen successor should be the
best man, not merely someone congenial to the incumbent. The philosophy
of 'the Garden' probably had some appeal to Hadrian himself, difficult though
it is to pin down his real beliefs. He had two friends who were philosophers,
according to the HA, one the aged Epictetus, a Stoic (with tendencies to
Cynicism), whom he had probably met a good while earlier, the other a certain
Heliodorus. There are problems about the identity of this man, but it seems
at least very probable that he was an Epicurean, named on another Epicurean
document at Athens, after a further letter from Hadrian, four years later. But
Hadrian may not have met Heliodorus the Epicurean until he went to Athens in
124. Plotina herself, it is clear, was a devotee of the Garden. Her Greek 'bristles
with verbal substantives ending in -ma, a characteristic of the style of Epicurus
himself.'44
Another letter supposedly from Hadrian to Plotina is preserved in the
'sententiae of Hadrian, a collection made for schoolchildren of a dozen of his
responses to petitioners, with a Greek translation. Suitably enough for a school
primer, several of the interchanges show Hadrian dealing with family problems.
The last one has him sternly reminding a son of his duty to honour his mother.
'If you do not recognise this woman as your mother, I will not recognise you
as a Roman citizen', it ends, adding details of the terrible punishment for
parricides. In one version a letter from Hadrian to Plotina is abruptly appended,
as if to illustrate the Emperor's own filial piety. It is an invitation to dine on
his birthday. If authentic, it could only belong to 24 January 120 or 121. (He
had held the great games on that day in 119.) He greets his 'best and dearest
mother':
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As you make many prayers to the gods for me, so also I pray to them for
you. For your piety and dignity can achieve everything. But I am glad, by
Hercules, that everything I do pleases you and wins your praise. You
know, mother, that today is my birthday and we ought to dine together.
If you wish, then, come in good time after the bath, with my sisters, for
Sabina has set off for the villa - but has sent a present of her own. Be sure
to come early so that we can celebrate together.
Only the reference to Sabina - apart from the letter's inclusion in the
Hadrianic sententiae - identifies Hadrian as the writer and by inference his
adoptive mother as the recipient. How such a private letter, if genuine, was
transmitted can only be guessed - perhaps by Hadrian's freedman Phlegon, a
copious writer; or the ab epistulis, Suetonius, might perhaps have taken the
opportunity of making a copy and have included it in one of his numerous
essays. (He certainly made use of various purely private letters by Augustus.) The
reference to 'sisters' has been treated as a sign that the letter is a piece of fiction,
for only one sister, Paulina, Servianus' wife, is firmly recorded. But if Hadrian's
real mother Paulina, widowed early, had remarried, he could have had a half-
sister. Otherwise, 'sisters' might refer to the younger Paulina and to Hadrian's
sister-in-law, the younger Matidia, very much alive at this time (she survived
for another forty years). Hadrian's private devotion to most of the women of
his family was no doubt genuine enough, even if it no longer extended to his
wife - her withdrawal to 'the villa, perhaps at Tibur, and absence from the birth-
day party might be taken as a sign of the letter's authenticity. One could even
speculate that if the occasion was 24 January 120, Sabina was still in mourning
for her mother Matidia. 45
Irrespective of Hadrian's private feelings, public honouring of Sabina's mother
was important. The funeral and consecration of Matidia at the end of 119 were
followed by the construction of a substantial temple in a prominent part of the
Campus Martius, adjacent to the Saepta Julia. This was the first time that a
temple had been erected exclusively for a Diva; and it was flanked on each side
by a Basilica, named after Matidia herself and her mother Marciana. Besides
this, work went ahead on the great temple of Trajan himself between Trajan's
Forum and the Via Lata. 46
These constructions were only a small part of what Hadrian set in motion
during this first stay in Rome. Trajan's monumental building programme, which
had transformed the centre of the city, had largely come to an end in 114. Many
considerations spoke for renewed building activity. It was the traditional way for
a ruler to win the favour and gratitude of his people. Grandiose projects could
provide employment for thousands, not merely humble labourers, but craftsmen
and entrepreneurs - and members of the ruling elite could profit too. The brick-
works that supplied the materials needed in vast quantities were situated around
Rome on land owned by these people, their names registered by the stamping
of the bricks. Rutilius Lupus, lately Prefect of Egypt, is a notable example,
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Hadrian's friend Platorius Nepos is another; and the family of Annius Verus'
daughter-in-law Domitia Lucilla had been growing steadily richer for more than
half a century through the building projects of Nero, of the Flavians and of
Trajan.47
New buildings were needed for the newly deified. But repair and renewal
was also required. The Campus Martius, in particular, adorned with great
monuments under Augustus and the Flavians, could properly be given attention.
Further, it was still liable to flooding, and major work was undertaken to
consolidate the Tiber embankment. Hadrian adopted what might be called an
ostentatiously modest approach. The HA biographer stresses that 'although he
was responsible for an infinite number of buildings everywhere, he never had
his own name inscribed on them except for the temple of his father Trajan.'
This somewhat exaggerates Hadrian's restraint, but the statement certainly
applies to the magnificent rebuilding of the Pantheon, close to the temple of
Matidia. The 'restored' Pantheon was in effect a totally new structure, far
larger than the original - and a work of unexampled architectural brilliance. Yet
the inscription continued to give the credit to the man who built the original
temple, M. Agrippa, thrice consul - Augustus' son-in-law. The Saepta Julia and
the Baths of Agrippa close by are also listed as having been consecrated by
Hadrian under the names of their initiators. 48
Here, as elsewhere, by such restoration, Hadrian was able to revive the memory
of Augustus and associate himself with that name. The Augustan character of the
northern Campus Martius, marked in particular by Augustus' Mausoleum and
the Ara Pacis, was respectfully maintained, but newly emphasised by Hadrian's
programme of renewal. Some work was also undertaken in the Forum of
Augustus. Besides all these considerations, there is no doubt that such activity
was intensely congenial to Hadrian. Architecture was one of his passions, and he
had a special scheme of his own. In the first months of 121, at the latest, he must
have decided on an extensive tour of the western provinces. Senate and People
should have no ground for resentment that he was neglecting or slighting the
Eternal City by his departure. O n the contrary, he would show the world that
his devotion to Rome was second to none. By tradition Romulus had founded
the city on 21 April, the day on which the sacred boundary, the pomerium,
was traced. Whether by coincidence or not, an ancient festival, the Parilia, was
celebrated on this, the city's birthday. Coins of 121 proclaimed something new:
'In the Eight Hundred and Seventy Fourth Year Circus Games have been
founded for the Parilia on the Birthday of the City.' The natalis urbis was to be a
major festival. Further, Roma herself was to have her own temple, shared with the
divine ancestress of the Roman People. A further coincidence was that 21 April
was the birthday of Rome's second king, Numa Pompilius. There are signs that
Hadrian liked to have himself compared to Numa - the peaceful successor of
the warlike Romulus. As for the pomerium, it was, by tradition, only extended
when the boundaries of the republic had been increased. Trajan had not
ordered an extension, although he could have done so with good grounds after
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the annexation of Dacia and Arabia. In 121 Hadrian had the existing line of the
pomerium emphatically renewed with a series of inscribed boundary-stones. It
was a clear sign that the empire was to stay within its existing limits; and he
would shortly make those limits clearer and more visible than ever before. 49
The Temple was to stand in a vast precinct east of the Forum, dominating
the Sacred Way on a great platform, stretching from just beyond the Arch of
Titus with its reliefs that glorified the sack of Jerusalem, almost as far as the
great Flavian amphitheatre, the Colosseum. The new temple was be raised on all
four sides and, housing two goddesses, Roma and Venus, would face in two
directions, with twenty columns on each of the long sides. It would take years
to complete; even the commencement of the construction work would have to
wait until lengthy preparations had been carried out. For one thing, the Colossus
of Nero had to be moved to make room for the temple's foundations. The HA
biographer, careless and in a hurry, forgot to mention Hadrian's most ambitious
building project, but managed to supply a detail. Decrianus, the architect, moved
the Colossus - which was more than one hundred feet high - with the aid of
twenty-four elephants supplied by the Emperor. The Colossus had been adapted
after Nero's downfall and represented the Sun God instead of its hated creator.
Now, the HA goes on, Hadrian commissioned Apollodorus, Trajan's master-
architect, to make a similar colossal statue of the moon-goddess. 50
Whether Apollodorus responded is another question. He and Hadrian
were alleged to have been on bad terms since the time when the architect was
remodelling the centre of Rome for Trajan and had offended the young man
by a sarcastic comment. Dio claims that Apollodorus had been banished after
Hadrian's accession - and that worse followed. The alarming sequel should
belong some years later, after the new temple was complete. The story is part of
a pattern that is matched by a string of anecdotes in the HA about Hadrian's
jealous and vindictive treatment of his friends in his last years. Here it need only
be noted that Dio tells the story of Apollodorus as an illustration of Hadrian's
burning ambition to excel in every art and science. This characteristic cannot be
doubted, the HA having a long list of his manifold talents - and of his jealousy
of the experts in each field. For the moment, it is enough to note that Dio
believed Hadrian to have designed the temple himself, which is plausible
enough. 51
But the temple was still only on the drawing-board when the new Festival
of the Parilia for 21 April was proclaimed. Hadrian presumably thought he had
done all he could at Rome, for the time being: coins of the year 121 proclaimed
a new Golden Age, Saec(ulum) aur(eum). The coin legend was personified by
the figure of Aion, whose name means 'eternity' - which Sol and Luna also
symbolised. Now he could turn to the provinces and frontiers; and the army
needed to be re-educated for its new role. 52
112
10
TO THE GERMAN FRONTIER
Hadrian's departure for the provinces probably followed shortly after the new
Festival of the Parilia. The exact date is a matter of guesswork. Even the coins
do not announce a Profectio Augusti. That Hadrian was outside Italy during the
year 121 is at any rate indicated by inscriptions of this year which give him the
title proconsul - Trajan, as a show of republicanism or traditionalism of some
sort, had started this practice. But there is no doubt about his destination: 'after
this he set out for the Gallic provinces', the HA biographer states emphatically.
There he continued the drive to gain popularity that he had displayed at Rome
the past three years: 'He supported all of them [either all the provinces of Gaul
or all the communities in Gaul] with largesses.'1
'After this' is not, however, very helpful for chronology: the previous sentence
refers to the posthumous honours for Matidia, which were awarded at the end
of 119. Hadrian's activity at Rome in 120 and 121 is passed over in silence in this
section, and nothing more is said about the Gallic provinces - it is only an
informed guess that he sailed from Ostia to Massilia and proceeded up the Rhone
valley. At all events, the commemorative coinage issued a dozen years later signals
not only Hadrian's advent in Gaul but calls him its 'restorer' (restitutof). The
personified Gallia, kneeling before the Emperor, is dressed in the long robe,
chiton, standard throughout the Mediterranean, rather than in the Celtic cloak,
sagum. Most of the restitutor coins show her with the horn of plenty, on her head
a mural crown; some show her helmeted, and on some she bears spear and sword;
on one she holds up an olive-branch to the Emperor. 'From there' - from Gaul -
'he passed on to Germany', the biographer continues, and then begins a lengthy
exposition of Hadrian's new programme for the army.2
Germany was no doubt his real goal - and Britain. He wanted to settle the
north-western provinces in person, and had plans for the frontiers. He was to
spend some months in Gaul on his return from Britain in the following year,
hence there is no particular reason to suppose that he wintered at Lugdunum
and only went on north to the Rhine in the spring of 122. He had spent a winter
at Moguntiacum (Mainz) and then at the Colonia Agrippinensis (Cologne) as a
young man twenty-three years earlier. The odds are that he wintered on the
frontier in 121-2. A reference in Dio to him enduring 'German snows' might
113
* #-
.V
v
* ^T
V ^
Plate 9 Hadrian on the move: the imperial galley

{BMCIII Hadrian no. 1395)
perhaps be claimed to support this. There was much to inspect: not merely the
two German provinces, but Raetia and perhaps Noricum as well, the small
Upper Danubian provinces, seem to have been on his agenda. It is probable
enough that he already intended to conclude with a visit to Spain and to the
North African provinces, an inspection of the remaining Latin part of the
empire, completing what had been undertaken in 118. He could be confident
that Rome was in safe hands in his absence. Of the two Guard Prefects, his old
friend Turbo was to stay in the capital: that alone would guarantee order. The
Prefect of the City, whose task was also to keep the peace, would be able to keep
the Senate sweet. This was M. Annius Verus, consul for the second time this
year, a quiet, steady man, whose network of marriage alliances undoubtedly
bolstered his influence - besides, he was of Spanish origin and some sort of
kinsman of Hadrian. The family was flourishing: five days after the Parilia a
grandson of Verus was born, who was given his names. The child was the future
Marcus Aurelius. 3
Hadrian no doubt had a large retinue. The Guard Prefect Septicius Clarus,
commanding elements of the Praetorians, was certainly with him. This literary
man was perhaps expected to be a congenial travelling companion, so too the
Chief Secretary, Suetonius Tranquillus, who, one may suppose, welcomed the
chance to see the Rhineland. After all, although he had probably already
114
completed his Lives of Caesar and Augustus, dedicated to Septicius, he would
now be at work on the next instalment: several of the following Caesars had been
involved with Germany and Britain. The Empress was also of the party - at
least, her presence and that of the two high officials is registered by the HA
in the following year, in Britain. No other names are securely preserved by the
literary or epigraphic sources. But an inscription at Olympia evidently called
M. Atilius Bradua Hadrian's comes. Bradua, probably an exact coeval of the
emperor, had been governor of one of the German provinces and then of Britain
in the later part of Trajan's reign. He would have been a suitable adviser for this
tour. One can only guess at other likely members of the party. The Neratii
brothers might have gone to the north-west with Hadrian: Priscus had governed
Germania Inferior twenty-five years earlier, Marcellus had been governor of
Britain a few years later. Hadrian might have taken one of his quaestors with
him. More likely at least one stayed in Rome, to read out his letters to the
Senate. But one quaestor was allowed to leave in another direction. The younger
Minicius Natalis accompanied his father, the new proconsul of Africa, to
Carthage, to serve there as legate. 4
Moguntiacum (Mainz), with the fortress of the legion XXII Primigenia, and
residence of the governor of Germania Superior, is a likely enough base from
which Hadrian could have launched his inspection of the frontier. He might of
course have preferred to stay with his friend Platorius Nepos, now governor of
Germania Inferior, at the Colonia Agrippinensis. But Hadrian was due to go the
Lower German province at the end of this section of the tour; from there he
would cross to Britain. From Moguntiacum he could have moved easily into the
lands east of the Rhine, the Agri Decumates, to look at the frontier installations.
The limes first established by Domitian north of the Main nearly forty years
earlier, following his war against the Chatti, had enclosed a fertile plain, the
Wetterau, opposite Moguntiacum. At first the frontier had been little more than a
cleared strip of land, with a series of signalling towers along it. Trajan had ordered
the moving forward of some of the auxiliary regiments from the hinterland to the
limes itself. Tacitus had not been prepared to count the cultivators of the 'Tenth-
lands' among the peoples of Germany - they had been drawn from the penniless
adventurers of Gaul, who settled in what had been a no man's land. By now,
'when the limes had been traced out and the garrisons moved forward, they have
become a projection of the empire and part of the province.'
Rome's frontier indeed projected unevenly northwards at this point: the aim
was surely to keep the Chatti at arm's length beyond the Taunus and Vogelsberg.
The fruitful Wetterau, already dotted with farmsteads which the descendants of
these mixed adventurers had established, could supply the troops. Further south,
the line of forts ran along the River Main, which for some 30 miles (48 km)
itself formed the frontier. Then the limes was driven through the forested hills
of the Odenwald, across to the valley of the River Nicer (Neckar), which it
followed as far as Grinario (Kongen), commanding a wide view of the Neckar
and Lauter valleys. At this point the direction turned east, or rather north-east,
115
to meet the boundary between Germania Superior and Raetia just beyond
Lorch. From there it went another 100 miles (160 km), curving gradually south-
east, to meet the Danube at Abusina (Eining), a few miles west of Castra Regina
(Regensburg). 5
Although the network of watchtowers and forts established under Domitian
and Trajan was already recognisably an effective frontier and there was no obvi-
ous sign of a military threat from the free Germans, Hadrian effected a striking
change. The limit of the empire was to be marked by a continuous palisade. It
was formed by great oak posts, split through the middle, with the flat side facing
outwards, strengthened by cross-beams. Here was a major undertaking for
the armies of Germania Superior and Raetia. Thousands of trees would have to
be felled, transported to the frontier and carefully erected. It presumably took
some years before the whole line was complete. The HA does not mention the
palisade in its account of Hadrian's visit to Germany, which is devoted solely
to his reform of military discipline. Instead, there is a general statement a few
pages later, that 'at that time and frequently at other times he marked off the
barbarians in many places, where they are separated not by rivers but by limites,
with great posts driven into the ground and joined together like a wall.' The
inference that it was Hadrian who ordered the erection of the palisade is
inescapable, even if no section of it has been proved to belong to his reign. It is
also a matter of guesswork how high this imperial frontier fence was: it could
have been as much as 10 feet (3 m). 6
As a military obstacle, the palisade was doubtless of restricted value. Its
symbolic significance was another matter. To the barbarians it marked off the
empire more clearly than ever before. How it was perceived by the Romans is
perhaps equally or even more important. It was surely Hadrian's way of making
plain that the policy of expansion really was at an end. The ideology of 'bound-
less empire', immortalised in Virgil by the divine promise of an imperium sine
fine, without end in time or space, was thereby unmistakably buried. It was a
clear signal to any surviving admirers of Trajan's expansionist policies that the
empire was indeed precisely defined: thus far and no further. Tacitus, writing his
account of Tiberius at this time, complains about his subject.
N o one should compare my Annals with the writings of those who covered
the ancient deeds of the Roman people: they could record great wars, cities
besieged, kings defeated or captured . . . we must labour in a confined
space, with no glory. There was undisturbed - or scarcely troubled -
peace, gloom in the city - and a Princeps with no interest in extending
the empire.
Tacitus' final comment, four words heavy with disdain, 'princeps proferendi
imperii incuriosus', could readily have been applied to Hadrian as well as to
Tiberius. When he came to the reign of Claudius, Tacitus would recall how the
great Corbulo, planning to establish Roman garrisons beyond the Lower Rhine,
was recalled by Claudius. 'The Roman generals of old were fortunate', was
116
Corbulo's laconic comment. Instead of pushing forward the bounds of empire,
he set his men to dig a 23-mile (37 km) long canal between the Maas and the
Rhine. It kept the troops occupied. 7
Hadrian's palisade, apart from any practical or symbolic purpose it may have
had as a frontier line, was also a means of keeping the soldiers fit and active. A
programme of converting forts and signal-towers from timber to stone, already
under way during Trajan's reign, was also in hand. The HA biographer devotes
considerable space to measures Hadrian set in motion to restore military
discipline. Indeed, it is the only subject mentioned in connection with his stay
in Germany at this time. Albeit eager for peace rather than for war, he trained
the soldiers as if war were imminent.' Example rather than precept was his
watchword, 'instilling into them the example of his own endurance'. He lived
the military life with the men, 'cheerfully eating camp fare out of doors, bacon
and cheese with rough wine.' 8
His models, the biographer relates, were 'Scipio Aemilianus, Metellus and his
own father Trajan'. In all probability the biographer's source, Marius Maximus,
derived these names and the whole section on the programme to restore
discipline from Hadrian's autobiography. There is every reason to suppose
that Hadrian would have presented such a picture of his own conduct, and it
would be entirely in character for him to cite Republican models - just as he
had invoked Cato to justify his abandonment of the new provinces. Scipio was
famed as the man who destroyed Carthage, but it was his conduct on his last
campaign, at Numantia, that was the model for Hadrian. The great general went
ahead with a small escort, having heard that the army in Spain was full of idle-
ness, discord and luxury: he knew full well that he could never overcome the
enemy unless he could first bring his own men under strict discipline. O n his
arrival he expelled all traders, harlots and soothsayers from the camp, had all
wagons and their superfluous contents sold, restricted cooking utensils to a spit,
a brass kettle and one cup. Food was limited to plain boiled and roasted meats,
beds were banned, and the general set the example of sleeping on straw. A
rigorous training programme followed, new camps being constructed every
day, with deep trenches being dug and high ramparts built - which were then
demolished the next day and the ditches filled. As for Metellus, this was the
consul of 109 BC, who turned the tide in the war against Jugurtha (only for
Marius to seize the credit for victory). He too had had to take over an army that
was weak and unwarlike, incapable of withstanding danger or hardship, subject
to no discipline or restraint. Metellus would not take the field until he had
forced the men to undergo old-style discipline, the disciplina maiorum. He
banned the sale of bread or cooked food within the camp, expelled merchants,
forbade the soldiers to have a slave or pack animal in camp or on the march,
and 'set a strict limit on other practices of the kind.' 9
Hadrian used carrot as well as stick, 'giving rewards to many and honours to a
few, so that they could put up with the harsher conditions he was imposing. For
he did indeed take army discipline in hand. After Caesar Octavianus it had
117
Plate 10 Hadrian in the west: DISCIPLIN. AVG.

{BMC III Hadrian no. 1484)
been on the decline, owing to the neglectfulness of previous emperors' - incuria

superiorum principum implies criticism of Trajan too, in spite of Hadrian's claim
that his adoptive father, as well as Scipio and Metellus, was his exemplar. The
appeal to 'Caesar Octavianus' is significant: before long Hadrian would make a
concentrated effort to present himself as a new Augustus. After this introduction,
the biographer presents a string of specific measures. Headquarters staff {officio)
and accounts were regulated. No one was to be absent from camp without
proper authorisation. Officers would win approval for just conduct rather than
for popularity. He encouraged the men by his example, marching as much as 20
miles (32 km) in armour. Then, in Scipionic fashion, came the purge: dining-
rooms, porticoes, covered galleries and ornamental gardens were demolished.
This measure probably mainly affected the officers, who were also specifically
prohibited from accepting presents from their men. Fancy uniforms were proba-
bly forbidden. This is not explicitly stated - but the biographer next reports that
Hadrian himself would wear the humblest form of dress, with an ungilded
sword-belt and a clasp without a jewel for his cloak, only with reluctance allowing
himself an ivory hilt for his sword. In general, 'he cleared out luxury from all
sides, while making improvements in arms and equipment.' 10
It was very much part of the tradition of what constituted good generalship
that he took pains to visit sick soldiers. His pronouncement that no one should
serve in camp contrary to ancient usage at a younger age than his strength called
118
for recalls a law to this effect attributed to Gaius Gracchus. Hadrian would
certainly have been aware of this. He added that there should be an upper age
limit as well. Neither the lower nor the upper limits are specified. His criteria
for appointment to the centurionate and the equestrian militiae were also spelled
out, at least in general terms: 'He would not award the vine-staff [the emblem
of the centurion's rank] to anyone who was not bodily robust and of good
reputation, nor would he appoint anyone tribune who did not have a full beard,
in other words of an age to assume the powers of a tribunate with prudence and
maturity.' (The 'full beard' is an implicit reminder that Hadrian's abandonment
of shaving had become the norm already.) Hadrian's 'practice was always to
be acquainted with them and to know their units', the biographer adds. In later
sections it is recorded that 'he regularly presented those that he appointed to
commissions with horses, mules, uniform, expenses and their entire equipment',
while his ability to recall the names of veterans he had discharged is given as an
instance of his phenomenal memory. 11
Further practical measures are registered in this section on the stay in
Germany. 'He would choose the site for forts himself, again a traditional sign
of a good general, attributed, for example, by Tacitus to Agricola as governor of
Britain. It is a reminder that some new forts were founded at this time. Finally,
'he made an effort carefully to familiarise himself with the military stores, so that
if there was any particular deficiency anywhere he could make it good. But more
than any other emperor, he aimed never at any time to buy or to maintain
anything that was unserviceable.' 12
What survives of Cassius Dio's Book 69 has a rather less detailed but in
general similar version of Hadrian's 'military reforms' - Dio may have taken it
direct from the autobiography - and, as in the HA, it is placed at the beginning
of a section covering the provincial tours, confirming the impression that it was
indeed in Germany that the policy was first unveiled. Hadrian 'inspected all the
garrisons and forts, some he removed to more suitable sites, others he closed
down, and established some new ones.' Once again the stress is on Hadrian's
'personal inspection and investigation not merely of the usual military items,
weapons, engines, ditches, ramparts and palisades, but even the private affairs of
rankers and officers, their lives, their quarters and their habits. Luxuries were cut
out. The men were drilled for every kind of battle, some were honoured, others
reprimanded - and Hadrian showed them personally how everything should be
done, and set an example by living austerely, using neither chariot nor four-
wheeler, but walking or riding everywhere, bareheaded alike amid German
snows or the heat of Egypt.' (The mention of Egypt shows that Dio summarised
the whole series of travels: it would be nearly a decade after coming to Germany
before Hadrian visited Egypt.) The result, in Dio's view, was that 'even today'
- in other words a hundred years later - 'the regulations he laid down are the
basis for military service.' The same opinion is expressed at the end of the fourth
century by the author of the Epitome de Caesaribusr. apart from some changes
by Constantine, Hadrian's officio, militiae were still in force. Vegetius, the late
119
Roman author of a military treatise, states at the outset that among his sources
for military discipline are 'regulations {constitutiones) of Augustus, Trajan and
Hadrian'. Vegetius specifically registers regular route marches in full armour, of
10 miles, to be carried out three times a month, by the infantry. The cavalry
were to cover a similar distance, practising pursuit and retreat. Otherwise, apart
from some innovations in cavalry tactics, reported by Arrian in his treatise on
the subject, and a change in the ranking of equestrian officers which has been
inferred from inscriptions, this is the sum total of the evidence for Hadrians
army reforms. The keynote was doubtless the stress on regular training and
manoeuvres - and on discipline. 13
Military matters were not Hadrian's only concern, even if the provinces he
was now in were dominated by the army. At some stage Hadrian was in
Noricum. Indeed, the commemorative coinage from the later part of the reign
records not only the army of this province, as is the case with Raetia, but quite
specifically his adventus, and furthermore the Norican mines. The adventus coins
show the personified Noricum, bare-headed, wearing short tunic and military
cloak and with a military standard (vexillum). He could of course have made
a detour from Pannonia into Noricum in 118, but it seems plausible to suppose
that he visited both Raetia and Noricum during 121 or 122. For one thing,
the coins illustrating his inspection of the exercitus Noricus show Hadrian
accompanied by a high-ranking officer, surely the Guard Prefect. Septicius
Clarus was with him in 121-2. In 118 there was presumably no Prefect at his
side. 14
Noricum, 'the Kingdom of Noricum', as it was still called, was certainly given
some attention by Hadrian. Two communities, Ovilava (Wels) and Cetium
(St. Polten), were granted the status of chartered town, muncipium, by Hadrian.
This did not necessarily happen during the Emperor's visit, nor did Hadrian
necessarily even visit these places personally, but it is likely enough. Whether he
found time to go to the iron-mining district in the south, to which the metalla of
the commemorative coins refer, is doubtful. A statue of Hadrian was set up in the
theatre at Virunum (near Klagenfurt), the town where the governor of Noricum
had his residence, and which Hadrian surely went to when in this province. The
principal city in Raetia, Augusta Vindelicum (Augsburg), gained higher status
under Hadrian, becoming a muncipium. Perhaps this elevation in status was
conferred by the Emperor in person? Raetia is not included in the adventus series,
but there is a coin of its exercitus — not showing a Guard Prefect with Hadrian,
who is mounted for his harangue. As it happens, the governor of Noricum
who was in office at about this time, Claudius Paternus Clementianus, was
himself a native of Abudiacum (Epfbach) in Raetia - his Roman citizenship
probably went back to the original annexation by Augustus' stepson Tiberius,
at that time still a Claudius. It could be that Paternus had performed a useful
service for Hadrian a few years earlier. His first administrative post had been as
financial procurator of Judaea, in which capacity he had also served as temporary
governor, replacing the legate - possibly when Lusius Quietus had been
120
summarily dismissed in August 117. The man who succeeded Paternus, Censorius
Niger, was himself a Norican, from Flavia Solva (Leibnitz) in the south of the
province. 15
There is just a hint that Hadrian's Greek friend Arrian might have been with
him. In one of his works Arrian reveals that he had seen the confluence of the
Inn and the Danube, close to the fort which was to become known as Batava
Castra (Passau), on the borders of Raetia and Noricum. Arrian might, of course,
have been there earlier in his career, perhaps as an equestrian officer, before he
became a senator. But it is an attractive possibility to suppose that Hadrian
might have had at least one Greek intellectual in his retinue during his tour of
the Celtic west. 16
Civic development in the region of a more modest kind was not neglected.
South of the Main a new civitas was created for the Auderienses and a small
town as its centre was founded (at Dieburg). The two communities on the other
side of the Main, the Taunenses with their centre at Nida (Heddernheim,
Frankfurt) and the Mattiaci, whose capital was at Aquae (Wiesbaden), may also
have come into being at this time. In Germania Inferior, the only clear sign of
Hadrian's activity in this sphere is more obvious: a settlement in the territory of
the Canninefates, close to a fort of the Rhine Flotilla (classis Germanicd) on
Corbulo's canal, took the name Forum Hadriani (Voorburg). This should be
a clue to his movements, and suggests that he went down the Rhine to the
North Sea coast, giving him the opportunity to visit the Batavi, who occupied
the Rhine island, insula Batavorum, and were the source of most of his Horse
Guard. The Batavians, 'the most outstandingly courageous' among all the
German peoples, so Tacitus had written, retained their old privilege, freedom
from taxation in return for military service, in spite of their great revolt in
6 9 - 7 0 . It may also have been Hadrian who conferred the rank of municipium
on the civitas of the Tungri (Tongeren). 17
Hadrian's tour of the Upper Danubian and Rhine provinces ended in
Germania Inferior. He may have taken the opportunity of visiting Belgica as
well. A faint hint that the imperial party went along the Moselle might be
gleaned from Suetonius' Life of Caligula, where he discusses the Emperor's place
of birth, and meticulously cites a statement of the Elder Pliny that it was at the
vicus of Ambitarvium in Treveran territory, above Confluentes (Koblenz). He
does not mention that he had been there himself, nor that he had inspected the
altars which, he says, Pliny reported were set up there 'for Agrippina's delivery
of a son'. But there are two other, slightly more positive signs later in the Twelve
Caesars that Suetonius made use of his presence in the Rhineland. In the Life of
Claudius he reports that there was more than one canal dug beyond the Rhine
by the emperor's father Drusus and 'they are still called the Drusine canals
today.' (Tacitus only knew one canal of Drusus.) Then he records that the future
Emperor Titus had served as military tribune in both Germany and Britain,
winning a high reputation, 'as evidenced by the statues still to be seen of him in
these provinces.' A meagre harvest, to be sure; but Suetonius tended to cite
121
books or manuscripts he had seen, rather than places or objects. For Hadrian,
at any rate, there was a reunion with an old friend. The governor of Germania
Inferior, Platorius Nepos, had been there since soon after his consulship in 119,
it may be assumed. In the last stage of his tour, if not before, Hadrian will have
stayed with Nepos in the governor's palace at the Colonia Agrippinensis
(Cologne) while discussing plans for the next stage. Nepos was to accompany
Hadrian to Britain and to replace Pompeius Falco as governor. 18
More than a decade later Hadrians tour of the German provinces was
commemorated on the imperial coinage. The figure of Germania had been a
common feature on the coins in Hadrians youth, in particular the Germania
capta issues of the 80s, with a captive figure celebrating Domitian's victories.
Trajan too put Germania on his early coins, no longer dishevelled and submis-
sive in defeat, but seated, erect and confident. The Hadrianic Germania is
shown standing, a large spear in one hand, the other supporting her character-
istic hexagonal shield. She wears a long, sleeveless tight-fitting tunic which leaves
one shoulder and breast bare. The portrayal is just as Tacitus describes German
women's dress - 'no different from that of men, except that the women often
have no sleeves to their costume, their arms and shoulders are bare and part of
the breast is exposed.' O n some examples she also wears the Celtic cloak (sagum).
The single coin issue of the German army is similar to that of several other
exercitusr. it shows Hadrian on horseback addressing three soldiers. 19
Plate 11 Hadrian in Germany: EXERCITVS GERMANICVS

(BMCIII Hadrian no. 1679)
122
11
HADRIAN'S WALL
Having completely transformed the soldiers, in royal fashion, he made for

Britain, where he set many things right and - he was the first to do so
- erected a Wall along a length of eighty miles, which was to separate
barbarians and Romans.
So the HA biographer recounts the journey of the year 122. 1 Britain was certainly
on Hadrian's agenda many months before he set foot on the island. Only the HA
explicitly records both the visit and its principal result, the erection of the Wall
'to separate barbarians and Romans'. It also has some anecdotes in the context of
the British journey, and later quotes the poet Florus' allusion to the Emperor's
'stroll among the Britons'. But there is also documentary evidence for Hadrian
being in Britain. Later coins commemorate the province herself, the adventus
Aug. Britanniae and depict the Emperor addressing the exercitus Britannicus.
Other coins with the legend exped(itio) Aug(usti) can also be referred to his British
venture. Two inscriptions specifically name the 'British expedition'. One honours
T. Pontius Sabinus, an officer who took reinforcements, 3,000 men, from the
Spanish legion VII Gemina and from the two legions of Upper Germany, on an
expeditio Brittannica, which can only be Hadrianic. The other records that M.
Maenius Agrippa was 'selected by the deified Hadrian and sent on the British
expedition' - as tribune of the First Cohort of Spaniards. Finally, a document
newly discovered at one of the forts on the frontier indicates that someone
stationed there hoped to present an appeal to the Emperor when he arrived to
inspect or to inaugurate his new Wall. 2
There had been trouble in the province at the outset of the reign, curtly
referred to in the HA with the remark that 'the Britons could not be kept under
Roman control.' Hadrian had sent Pompeius Falco from Lower Moesia to
Britain and Falco had presumably restored the position - but only after heavy
Roman losses. The figure of Britannia on coins datable to 119-20 can only
allude to this fighting. A little over forty years later the orator Cornelius Fronto
referred in passing to the great number of soldiers killed by the Britons when
Hadrian was Emperor. It used to be thought that the entire Ninth Legion, IX
Hispana, was wiped out. 3 The last dated record of the Ninth in Britain shows
123
HADRIAN'S WALL
Plate 12 Hadrian on the move: EXPED. AVG. (BMCIII Hadrian no. 1313)
it building at its fortress Eburacum (York) in the year 108. But other evidence
has come to light which suggests that the legion survived: the service in it of
several officers can hardly be dated earlier than the 120s. It may have been
operating away from Eburacum, at or near Luguvalium (Carlisle); and part of it
may have been transferred to Noviomagus (Nijmegen) in Lower Germany. 4
Whatever the truth about the whereabouts of IX Hispana in 122, Hadrian
decided on an important change. Another legion, VI Victrix, was to move from
Lower Germany, from its base at Vetera (Xanten) on the Rhine, to join the
garrison of Britain. It was part of the army commanded by Hadrian's friend
Platorius Nepos. Now Nepos was to succeed Falco in Britain. By 17 July 122 at
the latest the handover had taken place. It seems probable that Hadrian crossed
with Nepos and the Sixth Legion in June. The detachments commanded by
Pontius Sabinus had perhaps gone ahead. The commander of the Sixth was
evidently P. Tullius Varro, a native of Tarquinii in Etruria. Varro's brother,
adopted into the Spanish Dasumii, had been Hadrian's colleague as consul in
119. Varro had already commanded a legion, XII Fulminata in Cappadocia. By
chance we know the name of the senatorial tribune of the Sixth Legion at this
time. More than fifty years later M. Pontius Laelianus was honoured with a
statue in Trajan's Forum. O n the base is listed his long career, beginning with
the post of 'military tribune of legion VI Victrix, with which he crossed from
Germany to Britain'. 5
124
HADRIAN'S WALL
Enormous logistical efforts must have been undertaken by Falco and his
officers and by the imperial procurators in advance of the imperial visit. Over
5,000 men of VI Victrix and the 3,000 legionaries from Spain and Upper
Germany had to be housed. A. detachment of the Praetorian Guard, together
with the Horse Guards, and the whole imperial entourage also needed accom-
modation at a string of likely halting-places across the province. The Empress
Sabina, the Guard Prefect, Septicius Clarus, the Chief Secretary, Suetonius
Tranquillus, with other officials, and courtiers of various kinds were there too.
There is no certain record of senators who accompanied Hadrian on this western
tour as his comites, but two names may be suggested, Neratius Marcellus and
Atilius Bradua. Marcellus had governed Britain twenty years earlier, when he had
appointed Suetonius to a military tribunate, on the recommendation of Pliny.
Suetonius had, however, resigned his commission before taking it up. Neratius is
the most likely person to be the Marcellus described as a close friend of Hadrian.
As for Bradua, he was an exact coeval of the Emperor, had also governed Britain,
in the latter part of Trajan's reign, and he is known to have been a comes of
Hadrian at some time.
Sabina's presence was deemed advisable, no doubt. For one thing, even if
- or rather, because - she and Hadrian already hated each other, she could have
posed a threat if she had been left at Rome, the focus of potential intrigue. An
attempted coup may still have seemed a real possibility, although Marcius Turbo
and the rest of the Guard remained in the capital, with the steady Annius Verus
as City Prefect to keep Senate and plebs under a firm hand. 6
The HA states that Hadrian 'corrected many abuses in Britain' and 'settled
matters' there. His presence at any specific place in the island other than on the
line of the Wall is not explicitly attested. Nor is it known where he embarked:
Gesoriacum (Boulogne), the main base of the classis Britannica, is probable, but
he could perfectly well have set out from the mouth of the Rhine, coasted up
to the Humber and sailed into Eburacum - or indeed, have gone direct to the
Tyne. The renaming of the settlement at Voorburg as Forum Hadriani might
seem suggest his presence close to the mouth of the Rhine. But from whatever
port he set out, it may be imagined that he and Nepos first went to Londinium,
the seat of government, to stay in the legate's palace on the Thames, where
Sabina and some other members of his party, such as Suetonius, could have been
deposited. From there the Empress and her entourage may have preferred to
move on elsewhere, for example to the principal spa in the province, Aquae Sulis
(Bath). 7
Suetonius was to let fall a stray indication of personal observation deriving
from his visit. In Britain, as in Germany, now over forty years after Titus' death,
there were still numerous statues of that emperor to be seen, he reported in the
Divus Titus. Correspondence from all parts of the empire no doubt kept flowing
in. It must have been, for example, during Hadrian's stay in Germany or Britain
that a letter arrived from the proconsul of Asia, Licinius Silvanus Granianus:
the provincial council had tried to persuade him to do something about the
125
HADRIAN'S WALL
Plate 13 Head of Hadrian found in the Thames at London (British Museum)
126
HADRIAN'S WALL
Christians. Granianus sought guidance from Hadrian, but by the time the reply
was composed, it had to go to a new proconsul, Minicius Fundanus. As ab epis-
tulis, Suetonius must have had to deal with a whole series of letters of all kinds.
He was, as it happens, unusually well placed to offer Hadrian some advice in this
case, for he had been with Pliny in Pontus just over ten years earlier when the lat-
ter had written his famous enquiry about the Christians to Trajan.
A text of Hadrian s letter to Minicius Fundanus was soon in Christian hands
and was quoted by Justin in his Apology. One need not doubt either that
Fundanus was proconsul of Asia in 122-3, nor that Hadrian wrote to him about
the treatment of Christians following an enquiry by Granianus. It is plausible,
too, that the provincial council had tried to persuade Granianus to initiate some
kind of purge of the new religion. As Trajan had made clear in his reply to Pliny,
that was not to be imperial policy. Fundanus, who had been a friend of
Pliny, had probably read the correspondence. Whether Hadrian did more than
reiterate the line taken by Trajan is another matter. Justin's version, surviving
only in a Greek translation made by Eusebius for his Ecclesiastical History, has
Hadrian going some way beyond Trajan's laconic statement. He not only insists
that Christians must be prosecuted in the normal way, he lays down that they
must be shown to be guilty of specific crimes before they can be sentenced -
that would mean that 'the name alone' was no longer sufficient for a conviction.
Besides this, he threatened severe punishment for false accusation. It looks as if
Christians may have 'adapted' his rescript: other evidence indicates that there
was no change in the practice followed by Pliny and confirmed by Trajan. 8
A document issued to a veteran of the army in Britain may shed some light
on what Hadrian was up to shortly after his arrival in the province. O n 17 July
122 he granted the customary privileges to
the cavalrymen and infantrymen, who have been serving in the thirteen
alae and thirty-seven cohorts (the names of all fifty regiments follow),
which are in Britain under Aulus Platorius Nepos, having been discharged
with an honourable discharge by Pompeius Falco . . . to themselves, their
children and descendants, the citizenship and the right of legal marriage
with the wife they had at the time that citizenship was granted to them,
or, if any are unmarried, with the wife they subsequently marry (provided
that each takes only one wife).
To be sure, the formula was now standard and the Emperor's presence was not
required. But given Hadrian's known fondness for addressing the troops, his
presence in Britain in that summer, and, not least, the unparalleled number of
units given their privileges at one and the same time, one may suspect that some
special ceremony had been arranged. It was very unusual for two governors -
the old and the new - to be named in these documents. Had Falco deferred the
award because Hadrian wished to be involved?
Newly privileged veterans had to arrange for their own notarised copies of the
award to be made, if they wanted a permanent record on bronze. One copy of
127
HADRIAN'S WALL
this award of July 122 has been found. The recipient was called Gemellus, N C O
of the ala I Pannoniorum Tampiana, commanded by Fabius Sabinus. He had
gone home to his native Pannonia. Many of the veterans of the year 122 will
have settled in Britain. Local recruitment, which Hadrian's policy was to foster,
surely resulted in the majority of future veterans of British-based units staying
in the province after discharge. Nothing more is known of the prefect of the
ala Tampiana, Fabius Sabinus. But we do at least have the names of two other
commanding officers of the auxiliary regiments in Britain at this moment.
One, Maenius Agrippa, has already been mentioned, and will crop up again. A
local magnate at Camerinum in Picenum, Agrippa was to serve at the newly
constructed fort of Alauna (Maryport) on the Solway coast for four years, later
to return to Britain as Prefect of the Fleet and then as procurator of the province.
Agrippas newly raised regiment of Spaniards, an addition to the garrison, does
not feature in the diploma list. The other known officer, Q. Baienus Blassianus,
from Tergeste (Trieste), was holding his first appointment, as prefect of the
Second Cohort of Asturians, number 24 in the diploma list. Blassianus was to
go on to a long and distinguished career, which also included the British fleet
prefecture. 9
Wherever else Hadrian went in Britain, there can be no doubt that he visited
the 'frontier'. As in Germany, he had decided to mark the limits of the province
by an artificial barrier. It must be assumed that extensive preparations had been
undertaken before his arrival. That the British frontier-work was to be a stone
wall, with regularly-spaced guard-posts every Roman mile and two towers
between these posts, rather than, as in Germany, a simple timber palisade, may
have been his own advance decision. Lack of suitable forests to furnish the posts
for a palisade may have been the basic reason. Once it was seen to be necessary
to build the new frontier in stone, there was scope for something on the grand
scale.10
Hadrian had every reason to be well informed about North Britain. It is not
fanciful to recall that his earliest memories should have included some aware-
ness of Agricola's - apparently final - conquest of the northernmost part of the
island. Hadrian was already a seven-year-old when the great victory over the
Caledonians was won at the Graupian Mountain. When he began his own
military service just over ten years later, it was on the Danube, but in a legion,
II Adiutrix, that had been transferred there from Britain not long before.
Numerous soldiers and centurions that he served with in the mid-90s will have
had tales to tell about their fifteen years campaigning in Britain. When Hadrian
returned to Rome from his three military tribunates, in 99, he could hardly have
failed to read, perhaps even hear a public recital of the tribute to Agricola by
the general's son-in-law, Rome's foremost orator, Cornelius Tacitus. A few years
later Tacitus' first major work, recounting the history of Rome under the Flavian
dynasty, began to be made public. It included an extended treatment of the
wars in Britain - and a bitter indictment of Domitian for his surrender of what
Agricola had won for Rome. It probably did not impress Hadrian - it had
128
Key
1 Bowness (Maia), 2 Drumburgh (Congavata), 3 Burgh-by-Sands 18 Beckfoot, 19 Papcastle, 20 Caerm
(Aballava), 4 Stanwix (Petriana? or Uxellodunum), 5 Castlesteads 22 Birrens (Blatobulgium), 23 Nether
(Camboglanna), 6 Birdoswald (Banna), 7 Carvoran (Magnis), 8 Great 24 Old Penrith (Voreda), 25 Bewcast
Chesters (Aesica), 9 Housesteads (Vercovicium), 10 Carrawburgh Castle, 27 Chesterholm (Vindolanda)
(Brocolitia), 11 Chesters (Cilurnum), 12 Hal ton Chesters (Onnum), 29 Ebchester (Vindomora), 30 South
13 Rudchester (Vindovala), 14 Benwell (Condercum), 15 Newcastle (Luguvalium), 32 Risingham (Habita
(Pons Aelius), 16 Wallsend (Segedunum), 17Maryport (Alauna), (Bremenium)
Map 3 Hadrian's Wall

HADRIAN'S WALL
certainly had no effect on Trajan. At about the time that the first part of the
Histories was appearing, the great Imperator, basking in the glory of his second
Dacian triumph and pondering new adventures in the east, assented to a further
withdrawal of Roman forces from northern Britain south of the Forth-Clyde
isthmus. Here, Tacitus had written, 'were the valour of the army and the glory
of the Roman name to permit, a limit might be found within Britain', between
the Firths of Clota and Bodotria. The tidal sea on either side was separated by
a narrow neck of land, and 'the enemy could be pushed out, as if into a different
island.' Agricola's forts between the Firths and most of what lay between them
and the Tina-Ituna (Tyne-Solway) line to the south had been evacuated at the
latest by 105. Neratius Marcellus, probably the man who had implemented
the withdrawal, can be assumed to have had no regrets.11
At any rate for most of Trajan's reign the front line in Britain was back
where it had been forty years before. To be sure, Rome's authority had still been
exercised over the lands beyond, it seems: in the early years of Trajan Haterius
Nepos, then prefect of cavalry, had conducted a census of the Brittones
AnavioneseSy the people of the Anava (Annan) valley on the north side of the
Solway. This may have been followed by the enforced enrolment of young
Britons to serve as frontier guards in Upper Germany. Some may have come
from what is now southern Scotland, others from the Pennines, above all from
the Brigantes, the 'largest people in Britain, as Tacitus calls them. The
Brigantian lands straddled the backbone of the British province and stretched
from sea to sea. Near Cataractonium (Catterick), the site of an important base
for military supplies close to where the Great North Road forks, a western route
crossing the moors and going to Luguvalium (Carlisle), the Brigantian leader
Venutius had made a last stand against Rome over fifty years before. The Flavian
governors had occupied and garrisoned the whole Brigantian territory and
Agricola had taken the army to the far north. But the north-westernmost
Brigantians were located beyond the new Trajanic frontier-line, which Hadrian
now chose to make irrevocably permanent. 12
It was surely the Brigantes, with the support of the peoples across the Solway,
who had caused the trouble at the time of Hadrian's accession, suppressed by
Falco, but only after heavy Roman losses. Conscription of their young men,
derisively referred to by Roman officers as Brittunculi, 'the little Brits', looked
down on and more harshly treated than soldiers who came from overseas, the
transmarini, may be supposed to have goaded the Brigantes to rebellion. 13
In 122, the Sixth Legion seems to have been sent straight to the north. Part
of the headquarters staff may, indeed, have gone straight to Eburacum to take
over the fortress built by IX Hispana. The rest sailed into the Tyne. O n its arrival
the legion dedicated two simple altars, one to Neptune, adorned with a relief of
the sea-god's trident, a dolphin curled around it, the other to Oceanus, with a
ship's anchor. Alexander the Great had once sacrificed to the same deities in the
Far East, at the River Hydaspes (a branch of the Indus). Hadrian's friend Arrian
was to describe the scene. In another version Alexander sacrificed after sailing
130
HADRIAN'S WALL
Plate 14 Oceanus: a commemoration of Hadrian's crossing to Britain

(BMC III Hadrian no. 129)
out into the Ocean, past the mouths of the great river. At all events, that act had
marked the end of his Indian campaign. Now, nearly 450 years later, Hadrian,
one may fancy, consciously imitated the great conqueror - whom Trajan had
been so anxious to emulate. Was not Hadrian the first ruler of the world to reach
this distant limit, a western counterpart to Alexander at the Indus? Allusion to
Hadrian's presence at this place has even been detected on the imperial coinage,
which shows Oceanus and a river-god identified as the Tyne (in spite of the
feminine termination of Tina). By the shrine where the altars were set up, the
legionaries built a bridge. It was named Pons Aelius, 'Hadrian's Bridge', and was
to mark one end of the new frontier. First rafts of massive iron-shod piles were
laid in the Tyne, on which stone piers were built, each with cutwaters down-
stream and upstream for the tidal river. O n top came the bridge itself, with a
roadway some 18 feet (5.5 m) wide, presumably set on segmental timber
arches. 14
That the bridge bore his name is surely a sign that Hadrian was there during
its construction, indeed that he took a personal hand in its design. Architecture
was, after all, one of his great passions. Here, close by the Aelian Bridge, the
work on the new frontier barrier began. It was to be a massive stone wall,
10 feet (3 m) broad and 14 feet (4.2 m) high to the rampart walk, no doubt
with battlement. O n the north side a great ditch was to be dug, 30 feet (9 m)
131
HADRIAN'S WALL
Plate 15 River-god - perhaps the River Tyne? {BMC III Hadrian no. 132)
wide and nine feet (2.7 m) deep. Every mile, measured westwards from the
bridge, a small fort or guard-post - a 'milecastle' - was to be incorporated
into the Wall, and between each pair of milecastles two towers - 'turrets' - for
signalling were to be erected. These structures were to be built first, then, to
connect them, three hundred paces of curtain wall. 15
Hadrian himself may have approved the construction of a memorial at the
eastern end of the frontier. Two fragments from an inscription have been
preserved, reused in a church on the south side of the Tyne. Their size suggests
that the original text measured a good 6 feet across and was nearly 8 feet high.
It would have been on the base of a monumental piece of statuary - perhaps
representing Hadrian and the newly protected province Britannia. Hadrians
names came at the beginning, preceded by the label. . . omnium fil[ius], perhaps
'son of all the [deified]' - his ancestry now included Nerva and Trajan, both
divi, not to mention his mother-in-law Matidia. Otherwise one might restore a
superlative, [principum] omnium fid[issimus], 'most steadfast of all emperors'. In
the next lines come the words necessitate and then [conserjvati divino praecepto:
necessity was invoked, it is clear, and 'divine injunction'. From the lower frag-
ment there survives: diffusisf. . . J provincfia . . . ]Britannia ad[. . . Jutrumque
0[ceani litus?. . . Jexercitus pr[ovinciae . . . ]sub cur[a . . . 7. 'The scattering'
- surely of the enemy or the barbarians - is proclaimed, then perhaps the restitu-
tion of the security of Britain, and the erection of a barrier between 'the two
132
HADRIAN'S WALL
shores of Ocean by the army of the province, under the supervision' of Platorius
Nepos. This interpretation is at least plausible: the text probably represents
in part a speech by Hadrian, delivered to the troops on the banks of the Tyne - it
may be, of course, that the inscription was restored and amended under Severus
or Caracalla. 16
The Wall itself was faced with cut stone, with a clay and rubble core. Only for
the milecastles was mortar used, it seems, perhaps so that the work could proceed
even in winter (Julius Frontinus had recommended restricting aqueduct-
construction to the period from April to October because of the effects of frost
on mortar). The finished work was to be rendered with plaster and whitewashed,
with grooves cut into the plaster to give the appearance of regular ashlar coursing:
it would gleam in the sunlight and be visible for miles. Whatever calculations
have been made in modern times about the way the building operations were
organised, how long it took to complete the whole work, and the sequence in
which the various elements in the system were initiated, it is reasonable to
conjecture that at least a sample section was completed to full height for imperial
inspection and approval. The army was easily capable of rapid construction-work
- and not just the Roman army. Diodorus tells how the tyrant of Syracuse,
Dionysius I, with a labour force of 60,000 men, backed up by 6,000 yokes of
oxen, completed his great Syracusan citadel of the Euryalus and a wall 3 miles
(nearly 5 km) long in less than three weeks. According to tradition the same
Dionysius was the founder of Hadria, the Italian city from which Hadrian's fore-
bears claimed to derive. Hadrian will certainly have known that Dionysius was
the founder of Hadria: it was recorded by his freedman Phlegon. No doubt he
also knew the story of the record-breaking building project at Syracuse. 17
The defences erected by Dionysius should have been even more familiar to
Pompeius Falco, whose family came from Sicily. This is not to say that the idea
of building the Wall derived from Syracuse. Other sources of inspiration could
equally well be invoked. Appeal has even been made to travellers' tales from
China - hardly plausible. Ten years earlier, Hadrian had been in Greece. At
Athens, he would have seen the remains of the Long Walls joining the city with
its harbour of Piraeus, a double barrier some 5 miles (3 km) in length, with
internal towers and fortified gateways. More likely is the appeal to earlier Greek
history: at Thermopylae and at the Isthmus, the Greeks had undertaken major
works to wall out the barbarians. But whatever gave Hadrian the idea for
such a barrier, it is clear enough what he wished to achieve. The official policy
was no doubt that announced on the monument by the banks of the Tyne -
invoking necessity, the precept of heaven, the scattering of the barbarians
and the protection of Britannia. The HA version, 'to separate Romans and
barbarians', might well derive, via Marius Maximus, from the autobiography.
What is nowhere stated may nonetheless be inferred: by the construction of
this monumental barrier Hadrian was again, as in Germany, indicating that the
age of expansion was over. Jupiter's promise to Aeneas of an 'empire without
end' in time or space for his descendants, imperium sine fine, as Virgil had
133
HADRIAN'S WALL
rendered it, was significantly adjusted. The empire was still to last forever, no
doubt, but it had now a precise and tangible spatial limit.18
The restless and inquisitive traveller will not have waited by the Tyne for
weeks on end while the legionaries built the Aelian Bridge and began the Wall.
He would wish to see the whole line for himself. At the very least a journey to
the Solway must be envisaged, with Emperor, his friend Nepos, perhaps some
comites (such as Marcellus and Bradua), praetorian guardsmen, and Horse
Guards proceeding westwards, per lineam valli, as it would later be called. He
could, to be sure, have done the first part of the journey by water, up the Tyne
as far as Coria (Corbridge), where the Great North Road from Eburacum
crossed the river. But the remark of the poet Florus about Hadrian's 'walk among
the Britons' may be invoked in favour of his going on foot, studying each and
every part of the new frontier-line. Further, albeit the Wall was to mark the limit
of the empire, the lands beyond it were given some direct protection. There were
to be several northern outposts, two of them on the high road from Coria to the
north, at Habitancum (Risingham) and Bremenium (High Rochester). Further
up the northern highway, Trimontium (Newstead), abandoned some seventeen
years before, might have been worth a visit. It is easy to envisage the energetic
Emperor climbing the triple peak of the Eildon Hills to survey the Tweed valley.
Another likely point for him to inspect was the place where the Wall itself had
to be taken across another river, the North Tyne. Here, at Cilurnum (Chesters),
the proudly named ala Augusta ob virtutem appellata ('named Augusta for
valour'), dedicated an altar to 'the Discipline of the Emperor Hadrian'.19
The concern to restore discipline, already manifested in Germany, was now
to be institutionalised as part of the army's religion. Disciplina also features on
the imperial coinage (see Plate 10). Enough evidence of commercial dealings
by the military, some of them perhaps slightly shady and some from just before
Hadrian's visit, can be found in the Vindolanda writing tablets. This may
suggest that tightening up was needed in the army of Britain as well as that of
the Germanies. Other dedications to the Emperor's Discipline, not naming
Hadrian, have been found along the line of the Wall. The young senatorial
tribune of VI Victrix, Pontius Laelianus, never forgot this lesson. Forty years on,
'an eminent man and a disciplinarian of the old school', as comes of Lucius Verus
in Syria, he would rip open the soldiers' cuirasses - ornamental but ineffective
for defence - with his finger-tips and order their padded saddles to be slit
20
open.
Some of the older men in the Horse Guards — the Batavians — could
conceivably have served on the British frontier. The Ninth Cohort of Batavians,
part at least of the Third as well, had been based for some years at Vindolanda
until moved to the Danube twenty years before Hadrian came to Britain.
Vindolanda, first occupied in the 80s, lies on the east-west road from Coria to
Luguvalium - the Stanegate - in a little sheltered valley about a mile south of
the Whin Sill, the north-facing basaltic crags along which the Wall was to run.
Vindolanda, as Batavians in his Horse Guards who had served there might have
134
HADRIAN'S WALL
Plate 16 View of Vindolanda with the line of the Wall in the background
been able to tell Hadrian, would have been an ideal base from which he could
inspect the central part of the new frontier. At all events, what has been found
there, dating exactly to the period at which the Wall was begun, certainly looks
as if it was constructed to house persons of high rank. An unusually large and
solid building, with opus signinum floor and walls lined with painted plaster,
would have been suitable accommodation for the imperial visitor. Besides this,
it seems that someone stationed there was expecting to be able to hand the
Emperor a petition. One of the documents from Vindolanda, dated by its
context to this period, is a three-page account registering distribution of grain.
O n the back of the second and third sheets an unknown man - probably the
clerk who had written the account - penned an impassioned appeal. He had
been flogged - till he bled - but should not have been, he protested: he was a
trasmarinus, an 'overseas man', and innocent — the first word clearly implies that
floggings for Britons were normal. He had not been able to appeal to the Prefect,
who had been 'detained by ill-health'. Now, he writes, 'I implore Your Majesty
not to let a man who is from overseas and innocent suffer in this way' Hadrian
was noted for his accessibility to petitioners and concern for the common
soldier. But whether he read this letter is rather doubtful. At least, the draft
was found in what has been identified as a centurion's quarters of a barrack-
building at Vindolanda. The same centurion who had flogged the writer had
probably confiscated it. Supposing that the appeal did get to Hadrian, the odds
are that he was unimpressed, if the appellant was indeed the same person as the
accounts-clerk: several items in the grain-distribution look highly irregular.21
135
5 cm
T "
m ' - / " • « ; ;
^ • # &
m *^ /Sir ——*» ^% jr * s~ f
Plate 17 A draft letter of appeal to 'Your Majesty' (the words tuam maiesi [tjatem implore come in lines
HADRIAN'S WALL
Plate 18 Aerial view of Hadrian's Wall, with Cawfields Milecastle (no. 42) at the top
right. South of the Wall runs the line of the so-called Vallum
From the hillside east of Vindolanda, where the road from Coria approached
the fort, the imperial visitor will have been able to see to the north on the sky-
line the central, highest part of the line selected for his Wall, where it would run
along the top of the crags. He would have been able to say, as another visitor
did over 1,400 years later, Verily I have seene the tract of it over the high pitches
and steep descents of hills, wonderfully rising and falling.' Time will have been
found for entertainment, at least for hunting. Flavius Cerialis, Prefect of the
Ninth Batavians at Vindolanda twenty years earlier, had written to his friend
Brocchus, 'If you love me, brother, please send me some hunting-nets.' Hunting
with nets had evidently gone out of fashion in the meantime, to judge from the
essay on the subject by Arrian. Celtic greyhounds, vertragi, were now used to
catch hares. Hadrian would probably have hunted bigger game in the British
frontier land, wild boar. The imperial huntsman would have had no difficulty
in procuring the ingredients, which included boar's meat, for his favourite game
pie, his tetrafarmacum. An altar in the northern Pennines records the fulfilling
of a vow by an equestrian officer who 'had taken a boar of exceptional fineness,
which many of his predecessors had been unable to bag.' The country north of
the Wall would also have attracted: the local Celtic deity, Cocidius, was
137
HADRIAN'S WALL
identified not only with the Roman war-god Mars but with Silvanus the god of
the wild and of huntsmen. One of the outpost forts north of the western part
of the Wall was, it seems, placed at Cocidius' principal sanctuary, Fanum Cocidii
(Bewcastle).22
The frontier system stretched not merely from 'one shore of Ocean to the
other', as the inscription at the eastern end put it. The fortlets and towers car-
ried on for some 40 Roman miles along the western coast. This too will have
demanded Hadrian's attention. A visit to Maryport, where Maenius Agrippa had
been sent, may be regarded as probable. This man was a favourite of Hadrian,
who was later to stay with him at his home, Camerinum in Picenum. 23
What else Hadrian would wish to see in Rome's remotest province had no
doubt been a matter for speculation by Pompeius Falco. In anticipation of his
arrival road-building or road improvement had been undertaken. Shortly before
parts of the system at least, north of Cataractonium (Catterick), were in a poor
state. Octavius, probably a centurion based somewhere near Vindolanda, had
written to Candidus, a colleague at that fort, demanding to know what had
happened to a wagon-load from Cataractonium he should have been sent. 'I
would have collected it myself, he commented, 'except that I did not want to
wear out the beasts while the roads are bad.' Three British milestones survive,
which may attest preparatory roadworks ordered by Falco. In 120 the old road
linking the colonia of Lindum (Lincoln) was being renewed, as the milestone 2
miles (3.2 km) east of Ratae (Leicester) shows. In the next year a remote stretch
in Snowdonia, west of Kanovium (Caerhun), was being worked on - Hadrian's
propensity for climbing mountains was doubtless known to Falco, who may
well have ordered improvements there in case the Emperor chose to ascend the
highest peak in the province. A third milestone, not closely dated, 4 miles (6.5
km) from Lancaster, may suggest that Hadrian was expected to return south
down the west side of the island. 24
Developments in the now largely civilian southern part of the province have
been plausibly enough attributed to Hadrian's initiative. Eight years after his
visit the civitas Cornoviorum set up a monumental inscription over the main
entrance to the newly completed forum at their chief centre, Viroconium
(Wroxeter). The reshaping of this place may have been launched by the Emperor
on a flying visit. Other British towns may likewise have been substantially devel-
oped in the years following 122. Further, it has been suggested that a large-scale
programme of canal construction and land reclamation in the Fenland was
inspired by Hadrian. His concern to extend the cultivation of marginal land is
well attested elsewhere in the empire. 25
Except that Hadrian did not winter in Britain, it is impossible to say how long
his stay lasted. But sooner or later he had to leave his brainchild, the most
elaborate and costly of all Rome's frontier-works. The HA biographer places a
startling incident immediately after mentioning the voyage to Britain and the
erection of the Wall. Hadrian 'replaced Septicius Clarus, Prefect of the Guard,
and Suetonius Tranquillus, Director of the Chancery, and many others, because
138
HADRIAN'S WALL
they had at that time, in their relations with his wife Sabina, behaved with
greater familiarity than the etiquette of the court required.' Suetonius and
Septicius had clearly been left with the Empress. But the exact nature of their
offence must remain a mystery. What sort of impropriety can be meant? Had
Sabina started an affair with one or more of these men? Or should one specu-
late that Suetonius had caused offence by giving a reading of his work On
Famous Whores, or perhaps by relating the fruits of his researches about Tiberius'
private life on Capri, destined for a forthcoming volume of his Caesars'? But this
is merely to make a flippant guess: the mystery must remain. There is, for one
thing, a slight uncertainty in the text. 'In their relations with his wife Sabina
translates apud Sabinam uxorem in usu eius, but the last three words are
emended. The MSS read uniussu eius, corrected in one to iniussu eius, which
could mean 'without his consent', or even 'without her consent'. The HA biog-
rapher adds the comment: 'He would have dismissed his wife too, as he himself
used to say, for being moody and difficult, if he had been a private citizen.' The
Epitome de Caesaribus, which, like the HA, is evidently based on the lost vita
Hadriani by Marius Maximus, contains what one may call Sabina's riposte. 'She
used to boast openly that she had taken steps to make sure she did not become
pregnant by him - offspring of his would harm the human race.' 26
The HA for its part goes on to relate how Hadrian 'used to investigate not
only his own household but those of his friends: through commissary-agents
{frumentarii) he used to unearth all their secrets, and his friends were unaware
that their private lives were known to the Emperor until he indicated it to them
himself An illustration is supplied. A man applied for leave. Hadrian had inter-
cepted a letter in which the man's wife reproached him for not wishing to come
home because of his fondness for 'pleasures' and the baths. He now reproved the
man for his vices. 'What!' said the startled officer, 'has my wife complained to
you as well?' 27
At all events, it looks clear enough that Hadrian had received secret reports
from frumentarii about the conduct of his wife - and of his high officials.
Hadrian was surely not responsible for creating this body of men as a kind of
'secret police' - their headquarters at Rome, the castra peregrina, were already in
being under Trajan. But he may have used them, for political or indeed private
purposes, in a way that Trajan had not. In any case, the real nature of the offence
committed by Septicius, Suetonius and the unnamed 'many others' is obscure.
Infringement of court protocol - at an excessively informal literary soiree on the
Thames or at Aquae Sulis? - was no doubt merely the pretext. Septicius and
Suetonius were perhaps simply deemed incompetent - unless they had been
intriguing against Hadrian. Suetonius, who had already dedicated to Septicius
the first instalment of his Vitae Caesarum, would have to complete the work in
retirement. 28
Septicius' successor is unknown, but if the HA biographer's language is taken
literally he and Suetonius and the other dismissed persons were indeed replaced.
Yet no new colleague for Marcius Turbo can be identified. It is of course only
139
# #
P t o 75? Hadrian in Britain: BRITANNIA

A
2VM***
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ivv, <„ ^ NM
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Plate 20 Hadrian and the army of Britain:

EXER BRITANNICVS (5MCIII Hadrian no. 1672)
140
HADRIAN'S WALL
an argument from silence, but Turbo may have served a sole Prefect of the
Guard until near the end of the reign. The replacement for Suetonius as ab
epistulis may not have been appointed at once. Hadrian may have found the
right man where he was to go next, in southern Gaul, on his way to Spain.29
Alone among the provinces, Britannia had already appeared on the imperial
coinage before Hadrian went there. The personified province has been described
as 'Britain subdued', a figure of dejection, sitting with her right elbow resting
on her knee and supporting her head, her right foot placed on rocks. Others
prefer to see her as vigilant, rather than sorrowing. She is in native dress, with
short tunic and breeches, boots and an ample cloak, fringed at the bottom;
against her left side is a large spiked shield. Her hair is turned back from her
face in thick, waving locks. At all events, the issue commemorated the war which
Pompeius Falco had waged and which Hadrian's expeditio formally brought to
an end. A dozen years or more later, Britain reappears, with other issues recalling
Hadrian's provincial tours. On the province issue, Britannia resembles the earlier
personification, with spear and shield. But the adventus issue shows a purely
civilian Britannia greeting Hadrian, in long robe, with a cloak partly veiling her
head. There are two versions of the exercitus Britannicus issue. On one (see Plate
20), Hadrian is shown on horseback, haranguing five soldiers, one carrying
a vexillum (flag), three with standards. On the other, the Emperor stands on a
platform, addressing three soldiers, one with legionary eagle, one with vexillum
and shield, the third with a standard.30
141
12
A NEW AUGUSTUS
'After settling matters in Britain he crossed to Gaul', the HA biographer reports.

But the goal was Spain. A general inspection was planned and a summons had
no doubt already been sent out all over the peninsula for a special assembly at
Tarraco (Tarragona) in the spring. His obvious route would be to proceed to
Lugdunum (Lyons), down the Rhone valley and then along the coast by the Via
Domitia and Narbo Martius (Narbonne) to the Pyrenees. It is plausible enough
that he may have intended a detour to the south-west, to Aquitania.1
A 'disturbing' dispatch that reached him after he had crossed may have
curtailed his itinerary. There was rioting at Alexandria - provoked by religion.
It was only five years since the bloody confrontation there between Greeks and
Jews had been crushed by Marcius Turbo. The Jews were not involved this
time, nor indeed the Greeks, but rather the native Egyptians. Their sacred
bull, Apis, had been identified again at last, giving rise to violent rivalry. Coins
of Alexandria minted in the Egyptian year 29 August 121 to 28 August 122
proclaim the happy event. But the god Ptah, in whose temple at Memphis
the bull was kept, does not appear on the coinage until the next year, perhaps
indicating some delay and dispute. At all events, the Prefect of Egypt, Haterius
Nepos, may have urged an imperial visit, fearing the outbreak of serious
fighting. Instead, Hadrian was able to restore order with a firmly worded letter.
'Thus', commented Cassius Dio, 'a word from an emperor can have more
effect than the use of force.' Hadrian may have taken some time to discuss the
question with his advisers. It is possible that he was able to turn to an ideally
qualified person in southern Gaul, L. Julius Vestinus. At any rate, it is a
plausible guess that Vestinus had become the new Chief Secretary, ab epistulis.
His previous post had been exactly that held by Suetonius before the
Secretariat: Director of Imperial Libraries, a bibliothecis, and Cultural Secretary,
a studiis. Vestinus' occupation before that in Rome was highly relevant to the
problem over Apis: 'High Priest', archiereus, of Alexandria and Egypt, in other
words, the official responsible for temple administration. Although a cultivated
exponent of Greek letters, Vestinus was a Gaul, from a distinguished family at
Vienna (Vienne) near Lugdunum. It could well be that he had already been
named ab epistulis straight after Suetonius' dismissal and had joined Hadrian
in Gaul to take up his duties.2
142
A NEW AUGUSTUS
Whether or not Vestinus replaced Suetonius as Secretary, there is simply no
information about a replacement for the sacked Guard Prefect Septicius.
Hadrian ought to have had a Prefect with him - Septicius' colleague, the trusty
Turbo, remained in Rome, so it is supposed. Only a guess can be offered.
Q. Rammius Martialis, Prefect of Egypt from 117 to 119, would have been a
suitable candidate: holders of this post went on to the Guard Prefecture often
enough. Besides, Rammius, like Vestinus, might have been readily available:
at any rate, the rare name is found in southern Gaul, and a freedman of a
Q. Rammius is attested at Narbo. Perhaps this was Martialis' home, and he
could have taken up his duties almost at once. 3
A missive, less depressing than the despatch from Egypt, that Hadrian
probably also received in Gaul at this time, was a jokey little poem sent by
the now elderly writer Florus. The poet made fun of Hadrian's already evident
passion for travelling:
ego nolo Caesar esse

ambulare per Britannos
Scythicas pati pruinas.
The third line of four seems to be missing, since the reply that Hadrian dashed
off is a quatrain:
ego nolo Florus esse

ambulare per tabernas
latitare per popinas,
culices pati rotundos.
A free rendering might run as follows:

I don't want to be Caesar, please
- To tramp round the Britons, weak at the knees,
In the Scythian frosts to freeze.
I don't want to be Florus, please,

To tramp round pubs, into bars to squeeze,
To lurk about eating pies and peas,
To get myself infested with fleas.
If, as seems logical, Florus referred to Hadrian's travels in reverse order, the
latest being the visit to Britain, the first being that to the Danube delta -
'Scythia - in 117-18, the missing line ought to have been about the tour of the
Rhine and Upper Danube frontier in 121. One could restore 'latitare per
Sugambros or 'per Batavos\ or the name of some other people in that region,
perhaps just ( Germanos\ A
143
A NEW AUGUSTUS
Annaeus Florus had had mixed fortunes. Born in Africa, he had come to
Rome as a youth and entered the poetry competition at Domitian's Capitoline
Ludi. His entry was acclaimed by the audience, but he was denied the prize
because, so he later maintained, the Emperor did not want Africa to gain 'Great
Jupiter's Crown'. The disappointed poet took to travel, going to Sicily, Crete,
the Cyclades, Rhodes and Egypt, then returning to Italy, turning northwards,
crossing the Alps into Gaul, to settle finally at Tarraco, where he opened a
school. The city appealed to him: the people were honest, sober, peaceful, taking
their time to welcome strangers but when they did so they were judicious
hosts. The climate was particularly temperate - it was like spring all through the
year - and the country was fertile. Early in the reign of Trajan a group of old
acquaintances returning from Rome to Baetica came across him at Tarraco and
persuaded him to return to the capital, 'where your verses are recited.' 5
Hadrian should have known Florus personally. Perhaps he knew and valued
his poetry, not all of it so banal as the lines quoted above. Florus could write
about wine and roses, about carving the name of his beloved on the fruit-trees
that he planted. He had become disenchanted with women: 'Every woman
hides dangerous poison in her breast: Sweet the talk of their lips, hurtful their
heart.' He was also suspicious of foreign ways (sperne mores transmarinos). If he
had read them, Hadrian may have preferred the former of these two poems to
the latter.6
Florus was to turn his hand to history, producing a brief account, suitable
for schoolboys, of Rome's expansion up to the time of Augustus, with comments
on imperial inertia under later emperors - until, under Trajan, Rome was rejuve-
nated. At first sight, this suggests enthusiasm for conquest. But Hadrian would
have relished some of Florus' comments, for example, 'It is harder to hold on to
new provinces than to create them.' The new Emperor could with justice have
quoted this remark when confronted with the legacy of Trajan's Parthian war.
The last campaign that Florus recounts in detail is the final conquest of north-
west Spain by Augustus, who learned of the subjugation of the Cantabrian
strongholds by his legates while 'wintering at Tarraco on the coast'. The little
work ends with a celebration of the Augustan peace; the last sentence recalls how
it had been debated whether to call the new founder of the empire Romulus
- but that it had seemed more fitting to give him the name Augustus. 7
Hadrian 'wintered at Tarraco', the HA biographer writes. He mentions first
in a single sentence an action of Hadrian's in Gaul, the erection of a basilica 'of
remarkable construction' at Nemausus (Nimes) in honour of the dowager-
empress Plotina, whose family, it seems, came from that city. That Plotina had
died is not stated explicitly here, but in the Epitome of Cassius Dio her death
and Hadrian's reaction follow immediately after the story of how he mourned
for his favourite horse Borysthenes - honoured by a tomb and a verse epitaph
composed by himself. A stone with just such an epitaph was found at Apta
(Apt), not far from Nemausus, in the sixteenth century. The HA biographer
probably found the same story in Marius Maximus, but only alludes to it in a
144
A NEW AUGUSTUS
later section summarising Hadrian's character: 'He loved horses and dogs so
much that he set up tombs for them' - no details about Hadrianic dogs have yet
come to light. 8
Apta, on the high road from the Rhone up the Durance to the Cottian Alps
and Turin, was no doubt the scene of a hunting trip. The city itself is on a river
but its territory included mountains, especially on the north, where it stretched
into the foothills of the Alps. At this prosperous little place, a colonia since
Caesar's time, Hadrian would have found congenial company for a hunt, witness
two dedications to the hunters' god Silvanus at Apta itself and three more at the
old hill-fort of St-Saturnin nearby.9
Somewhere in these parts in autumn or early winter 122 Borysthenes died.
Hadrian probably dashed off the verses the same day, no masterpiece, to be sure
(hence some argue the lines are not authentic), but deserving quotation - at least
in prose: 'Borysthenes the Alan, Caesar's hunting-horse, used to fly over plains
and marshes and hills and thickets, at Pannonian boars - nor did any boar,
with tusks foaming white, dare to harm him as he followed, or spray the tip of
his tail with spittle from its maul (as tends to happen), but in unimpaired
youth, with limbs unscarred, after meeting his day of fate, he lies in this field.'
When Alexander's famous horse Bucephalus died in India, the great conqueror
allegedly founded a city at the spot. Hadrian was to show himself prone to
gestures of this kind - a new city in the province of Asia would commemorate
a successful hunt. The smaller and intensely romanised Gallia Narbonensis
hardly needed a new foundation. 10
As for the commemoration of Plotina, the erection of the basilica at
Nemausus cannot, it seems, have been ordered before the start of 123. At any
rate, stamped tiles from brickworks she owned near Rome dated by the consuls
of this year bear her name as though she were still alive. Wherever Hadrian was
when he heard of the death of his great supporter - and mother by adoption -
he no doubt went in person to Nemausus. There cannot have been time for
more than the choice of a site, the drawing up of plans and the guarantee of
funding. The construction presumably took several years to complete. An
inscription from Nemausus records an exactor, overseer, of the 'marble- and
stonework of the basilica. Dio records that 'when Plotina, through whose love
he gained the throne, died, he honoured her in exceptional fashion, wearing
black for nine days, building her a temple and composing some hymns about
her.' Whether the 'temple' is in fact the basilica at Nemausus is unclear. Plotina
was in due course deified, perhaps not until Hadrian returned to Rome nearly
three years later. Another excerptor quotes a little more: 'when Plotina died,
Hadrian praised her, saying that "she asked much of me but was never refused
anything", meaning by this no more than that "her requests were such that they
were neither difficult to fulfil nor gave any grounds for refusal."'11
Nemausus would have no doubt earned a visit from Hadrian in any case. It
had produced senators for several generations, the first notable example being
the caustic orator Cn. Domitius Afer, consul under Caligula and a celebrated
145
A NEW AUGUSTUS
figure in Claudio-Neronian Rome. One of his sons by adoption, the immensely
wealthy Domitius Tullus, would have been well-known to Hadrian as a fellow-
Vllvir epulonum. Besides, Tullus' granddaughter Domitia Lucilla was daughter-
in-law of Hadrian's City Prefect, Annius Verus. Verus' own daughter Faustina
was married to another prominent man from Nemausus, T. Aurelius Fulvus.
Even if these families of the new elite had by now little personal contact with
their place of origin, they may be assumed to have still possessed estates there.
Hadrian would have had ample choice of accommodation. Vienna (Vienne),
Arelate (Aries), Vasio (Vaison) and other cities of Narbonensis could also boast
citizens with seats in the Roman Senate - and they could have had more.
An inscription from the Rhone valley in honour of one Q . Valerius Macedo, a
magnate of Vienna, registers that 'the deified Hadrian offered him the broad
stripe [of senatorial rank] with the quaestorship and permitted the honour to be
declined.' 12
When the time came to move on to Spain, Hadrian's route will certainly have
been along the old Via Domitia, and he may be assumed to have visited Narbo
Martius, the original colonia, founded in 118 BC as 'a bulwark of the empire
against barbarous peoples' (as Cicero had put it), and capital of the province.
The possibility that he now had a new Guard Prefect (Rammius Martialis) from
the colonia has already been mentioned. Unlike the once native Gallic cities such
as Vienna and Nemausus, Narbo is not known to have produced senators yet.
Hadrian now elevated one of its leading citizens to this status, L. Aemilius
Arcanus, who had held three commissions as an equestrian legionary tribune,
the third being in II Augusta of the army of Britain. Arcanus did not, like
Valerius Macedo, disdain 'adlection into the amplissimus ordd. Hadrian might
have come across Arcanus in Britain, and he might have registered the fact, if
Arcanus did not remind him of it, that the man's father had been a friend of the
poet Martial. 13
Martial ought to have been in Hadrian's thoughts anyway, as he approached
Tarraco. One of his finest poems, to his fellow-townsman Licinianus, celebrates
a visit by his friend to Bilbilis - but not to stay for the winter: come the
December snows and the hoarse north wind, Licinianus will head for 'Tarraco's
sunny shores' and spend his time hunting. These lines should have appealed to
Hadrian, and he should have known them - the addressee was, like Hadrian, a
protege of Licinius Sura, who is mentioned at the end of the poem. O n the road
down to Tarraco Hadrian could have seen numerous inscriptions, and no doubt
statues, of the great man. Sura, though probably deriving from the now decayed
inland colonia at Celsa, had clearly possessed property and influence at Barcino
(Barcelona), which lay on Hadrian's route. At Tarraco, too, an ancestor of Sura
was commemorated - by an arch across the road leading to the city. Hadrian
surely stayed first at Barcino: this was the home-town of Pedanius Fuscus,
husband of his niece Julia. Fuscus, if anyone, must have been regarded as
Hadrian's likely heir at this stage. The couple were, indeed, probably travelling
with Hadrian. 14
146
A NEW AUGUSTUS
Hadrian had doubtless been to Tarraco before - perhaps over thirty years
before, on his way to and from Italica in his youth, for he probably travelled by
land like the group of Baeticans who came across Florus at Tarraco. Hadrian will
have been well informed about the city's history: the oldest Roman foundation
in Spain, founded by the brothers Scipio in 218 BC at the start of the Hannibalic
War - massive walls they constructed survived. The son of the younger brother,
the future Scipio Africanus, had founded Italica twelve years afterwards. Tarraco
had been his headquarters from 211 to 206 BC. Here in 211 and 210 he had
summoned representatives of Rome's Spanish allies. Hadrian may perfectly
well have had this distant historical precedent in mind when he planned his own
conventus of all the 'Hispani'. There can be no doubt that he was also thinking
of Augustus, who had wintered at Tarraco almost exactly 150 years before. The
first thing that the HA biographer reports about Hadrian's stay at Tarraco is that
'he rebuilt the Temple of Augustus at his own expense.' 15
Tacitus, as it happens, had recently been reporting its original construction in
the first book of his Annals, under the year 15: Approval was given [by Tiberius]
to the request of the Hispani, who applied to erect a Temple to Augustus in the
colonia of Tarraco - which provided an example for all the provinces.' Tarraco
was laid out in two parts, divided by a great Circus. O n two terraces on the
north-east side of the city were the principal public buildings, including two
Fora and the Temple of Augustus, and the area set aside for the meetings of the
Council of the Province of Hispania Citerior, which administered the imperial
cult. Here, it may be assumed was the venue for Hadrian's conventus}6
Hadrian's presence at Tarraco in the 150th year after the first emperor was
given the name Augustus (16 January 27 BC) seems to coincide with an impor-
tant policy development. The imperial coinage at about this time drastically
abbreviates Hadrian's titulature. Instead of being styled 'Imp. Caesar Traianus
Hadrianus Aug.', he would soon be presented simply as 'Hadrianus Augustus'.
The message thereby conveyed is plain enough: he wished to be seen as a new
Augustus. Such a notion had clearly been in his mind for some time. It cannot
be mere chance that caused Suetonius to write, in his newly published Life of
the Deified Augustus, that the first emperor had been 'far removed from the desire
to increase the empire or for glory in war' - an assertion which his own account
appears to contradict in a later passage. Tacitus, by contrast, out of touch - and
out of sympathy - with Hadrian from the start, but aware of his aspirations to
be regarded as an Augustus redivivus, seems subversively to insinuate, in the
Annals, that a closer parallel could be found in Tiberius. 17
Be this as it may, whatever symbolism may be read into Hadrian's residence
at Tarraco in early 123, the great assembly was the principal event. Hadrian may
have had much to pronounce upon. Only one item is recorded: he proclaimed
a levy, dilectus. That Spain should provide soldiers was nothing new. Auxiliary
regiments of Asturians, Bracaraugustani, Celtiberi, Vardulli, Vascones, as well as
undifferentiated 'Hispani', testify to the continuation of the peninsula's martial
traditions under the principate. Hadrian probably meant service in the legions,
147
A NEW AUGUSTUS
of which Spain itself had for more than two generations had only one on its soil,
VII Gemina, at Legio (Leon) in the north-west. A thousand men from VII
Gemina had just been sent to Britain, where they probably had to remain for
good, assigned to the British legions, no doubt an unwelcome transfer. Now VII
Gemina will have needed supplementation. Besides which, Hadrian may have
already planned an intervention across the Straits, in Mauretania. For this too
troops from Spain might be required.18
At all events, there was an unfavourable reaction. 'The "Italici" demurred,
with a humorous speech, the others in all seriousness;5 Hadrian 'deliberated the
matter with circumspection and skill', reports the HA biographer, quoting
Marius Maximus. This leaves us uncertain of the outcome, but it seems likely
that a levy was held, and that it continued to be held at regular intervals
for a good forty years. A further puzzle is the identity of the Italici. Unless
the author has been careless - or the text is corrupt - Italicis cannot refer to the
representatives of Hadrian's native city: they would properly be described as
Italicensibus. As it stands, the sentence implies that there was a distinction
between the Spaniards of Italian descent and the enfranchised natives. This is
indeed perfectly plausible: there were, after all, separate words for the two
categories, Hispanienses for the descendants of immigrants, Hispani for the
natives. This still does not make the story entirely intelligible. Why should
the Italo-Spaniards protest with 'humour', the others with passion? If anything,
the former category might have been expected to protest much more strongly
- for the Italians themselves were by now, in practice, spared from military
service, the colonial or Romanised provincials, by contrast, supplying the bulk
of the recruits to the western legions. The answer may be that all the Spaniards
had been taking for granted that the legions were going to be supplied princi-
pally from the coloniae in the frontier provinces. The Italici may have jokingly
commented that the levy could hardly apply to them.19
Perhaps while the assembly was in progress - 'at this time', writes the HA
biographer, which may just mean 'while he was at Tarraco' -
he came into very great danger, but not without winning great credit.
While he was strolling through some gardens, a slave of his host rushed at
him with a sword in a mad frenzy. Hadrian took hold of him and had him
handed over to the attendants who ran up. When it was established that
the slave was insane, he passed him to doctors for treatment, he himself
being in no way agitated.
Hadrian's unnamed host, it may be conjectured, was perhaps C. Calpurnius
Flaccus, former High Priest of the provincial emperor-cult, correspondent of
Pliny, and father of a senator. As was to be expected, the provincials did their
best to honour Hadrian. The precinct of the Temple of Augustus would soon
be swarming with his statues. Some years later a High Priest was commissioned
by the Council of the province 'to gild the statues' of Hadrian - presumably they
were bronze and beginning to turn green.20
148
A NEW AUGUSTUS
Hadrian's movements after the conclusion of the Spanish assembly can only
be guessed. But his coinage later commemorates the exercitus Hispanicus and
depicts him addressing the troops, with a legionary eagle clearly displayed. It is
a natural inference that he visited the sole legionary base, that of VII Gemina,
at Legio (Leon). The route from Tarraco would have taken him past Ilerda
(Lerida), where Caesar had won a victory in the Civil War in 49 BC, Celsa and
Caesaraugusta (Saragossa). From there he could have proceeded via Numantia
(near Soria) and Clunia. But if, as here argued, he was consciously treading in
Augustus' footsteps, the northerly route is more probable, on up the Ebro,
through Calagurris (Quintilian's home) and then west to Segisama, where
Augustus himself had established his camp in the Cantabrian war, before
withdrawing to winter at Tarraco. From there Hadrian could go on to Legio.
He might have been there already, a long time before, when Trajan was
commanding VII Gemina. A visit to Asturica (Astorga), seat of the procurator
and of the iuridicus, only a few miles west of Legio, may also be conjectured.
The iuridicus, Ti. Claudius Quartinus, had been there for several years, it seems.
His fragmentary cursus-mscn\)X\on from a statue-base at Ostia, combined with
another one from Lugdunum, shows that he had two special assignments
at 'Hadrian's command'. The first was very probably to 'carry out a levy', the
second would take him far from Spain. 21
It is commonly denied that Hadrian visited the other two Spanish provinces,
Lusitania and Baetica. The later commemorative coinage simply celebrated
Hispania, Hadrian as the 'restorer' of the whole peninsula and his adventus
there. The three separate provinces are not shown, simply an elegant female fig-
ure of Hispania, with corn-ear, olive branch and a rabbit to symbolise Iberian
natural products. All that is certain is that he ostentatiously avoided his native
Italica, as Cassius Dio explicitly comments: his 'compatriots' had presumably
been expecting him, and may have been preparing to petition him to enhance
the status of the town. They had to submit the request in writing: Hadrian
would respond in a speech before the Senate. However this may be, there is no
reason why he should not have gone south from Legio, on the high road across
the Meseta via Salmantica (Salamanca) and Norba (Caceres) to Emerita
(Merida), then down the Baetis valley to Corduba. It is perhaps too much to
suggest that he could have gone on down the great river to Hispalis (Seville).
That would have made his snub to Italica a few miles away on the opposite bank
the more pointed. He had plenty of friends in other cities of Baetica.
Furthermore, he may have wished to visit Gades (Cadiz), his mother's home
town. As for Italica, even if he declined to appear there in person, Hadrian
poured funds into his home town, which was rebuilt on a lavish scale, being
equipped with public buildings quite out of proportion to the town's importance
- the new amphitheatre, for example, was to be one of the largest in the entire
empire. 22
Even if Hadrian's itinerary is very uncertain, the HA appears to point him in
a southerly direction in its tightly condensed summary. After the episode of the
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mad slave at Tarraco, the biography suddenly seems to revert to a previous
theme, the erection of artificial frontiers, with the passage quoted in connection
with the limes in Upper Germany - how he set the barbarians apart, where there
no rivers as a dividing-line, by great stakes 'in the manner of a palisade'. The
passage might be misplaced, and should belong just before the description of the
British visit and the building of the Wall. But the next sentence reports not only
a further item concerning Germany - 'he appointed a king for the Germans' -
but adds that 'he suppressed revolts among the Moors and earned a public
thanksgiving from the Senate.'
In the HA's source the remarks about frontier fortifications - the German
palisade - could have been explicitly linked with the appointment of a German
king, perhaps of the Chatti just beyond the new Wetterau-limes or the
Hermunduri of Thuringia. There is no reason, indeed, why Hadrian might not
have implemented both these measures by letter from southern Spain. In other
words, the erection of the German palisade may have been decided upon only
after the Wall in Britain had been begun. 23
The suppression of the motus Maurorum is another matter. It is surely
plausible that Hadrian went to Mauretania himself - otherwise the 'thanks-
giving' voted by the Senate would seem out of place. Whether the disturbances
were a resurgence of the trouble suppressed by Marcius Turbo five years earlier
- provoked, it was conjectured, by the downfall and death of the Moors' great
man, Lusius Quietus - is impossible to tell. At any rate, this time Hadrian was
available himself, and not far away, and there is no reason to deny his personal
intervention. If he had acted through subordinates, the HA was perfectly
capable of saying so (as with Antoninus Pius' military successes). Furthermore,
the fact that artificial frontiers are mentioned just before the 'Moorish distur-
bances' permits the conjecture that Hadrian instructed the governors of the
two Mauretanian provinces to give their attention to this matter too. He very
probably intended a personal inspection of the North African provinces and in
particular of the frontier. 24
The HA biographer, intent on condensing his source, has telescoped
Hadrian's movements drastically. Reports arrived, it is clear, that made Hadrian
curtail the next stage in his tour: his presence in the East was essential: 'A war
with Parthia was getting under way at this very time.' Hadrian sent for the
iuridicus of Hither Spain, Claudius Quartinus, who was instructed to collect
detachments of two eastern legions and move to the Euphrates frontier. He
himself would follow. When the news from the other side of the empire reached
him, he was in all probability in Mauretania - at least, this is implied by the
order of events in the HA. The postulated crossing from southern Spain to
Mauretania in 123 was to be Hadrian's last personal contact with the western-
most European provinces of the empire. The new Augustus had more to do in
the east.25
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Hadrian's progress from the western to the eastern end of the Mediterranean in
the course of the year 123 has been called the most poorly documented stage
in all his journeyings, at least as far as the major source, the HA vita, is concerned.
The biographer, after mentioning the thanksgiving for the suppression of
Moorish disturbances, abruptly proceeds: 'War with the Parthians was in
prospect at this same time and it was checked by a personal intervention (conlo-
quiurri) on Hadrian's part.' In other words, the Emperor negotiated with the
Parthians, presumably on the Euphrates. Nothing is said about how he got
there. Probability points to a journey by sea along the North African coast and
then to the port of Antioch in Syria, Seleucia in Pieria. The ship that appears
on the coinage of Alexandria from the year 123-4 is presumably an allusion to
this voyage. l
However urgent the business, it need not follow that Hadrian sailed direct
to Syria. Pauses must be postulated, and two or three stations may be
suggested. Nor need one assume that they were only for rest and recreation. It
is too much to suppose that Hadrian was able to get to the Numidian frontier,
far inland. He may have originally planned this - extensive road-building on
the trunk route from Carthage to Theveste was undertaken in 123. But he
could well have summoned the commander of the legion III Augusta, Metilius
Secundus, for a conference and instructed him to draw up plans for a new
fortified frontier line. 2
A fragment from a lost source may be invoked, which supports the case for
Hadrian's presence on the soil of Africa at this time. His freedman Phlegon
devoted the last two books, 15 and 16, of his historical work, The Olympiads,
to Hadrian's reign. Only a few isolated extracts survive, but they suggest that
Phlegon's account of these years followed the imperial itinerary. Phlegon himself
was probably a member of Hadrian's entourage, along with the freedman
Alcibiades from Nysa, Hadrian's chamberlain {a cubiculo), to whom he was to
dedicate the work. Book 15 seems to have covered the years 117-25. Phlegon
referred in it to 'Furnita, a city in Africa, whose inhabitants are called Furnitani'.
This should mean that Hadrian had some dealings with a town of this name
before his main visit to Africa in 128, which would have been dealt with in
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Book 16. There were two places called Furni, or rather Furnos: Furnos Minus,
a little way west of Carthage, in the Bagradas valley, on the main road to
Membressa, and Furnos Mai us, some 60 miles (100 km) south-west of
Carthage, on the road to Theveste and the Numidian frontier. It might seem
more plausible that Hadrian spent a few days at Furnos Minus, close to
Carthage. Yet Furnos Minus did not get its charter as a municipium until the
next century. Furnos Maius enjoyed this status in the 180s - and had perhaps
gained it from Hadrian during this fleeting visit. A considerable number of other
cities in Roman North Africa certainly did receive privileges from Hadrian: it is
preferable to assign these measures to the later visit. Furnos Maius might, for
example, have hosted the postulated conference between Hadrian and the legate
Metilius Secundus. 3
The identity of the proconsul, who would have received Hadrian at Carthage,
is not known. It might well have been Atilius Bradua, who had been consul the
same year as Hadrian, and had been governor of Britain under Trajan. Bradua
seems to have accompanied Hadrian on his travels, to judge from his career
inscription. It might be that he first joined the imperial party at this stage. But
he could have been with Hadrian for the past two years, and have stayed at
Carthage to take up his proconsulship. 4
Another plausible station on the route eastwards is Cyrenaica. The province
- or half-province, for it was administered jointly with Crete - had been badly
ravaged in the great Jewish revolt a few years before. Hadrians measures had been
launched already: an inscription of the year 119 at Cyrene registers his order to
restore 'baths, with porticoes and ball-courts and other adjacent buildings,
destroyed and burned down in the Jewish disturbances'. Over twenty years later
the Cyrenaeans had occasion to set up in a public place - probably the
Caesareum — a series of imperial decisions relating to their city. One of these texts
has been identified as an address by Hadrian before the assembled people (rather
than as a letter from him). The fragmentary inscription refers to the donation
of funds for the training of the young men of good family, the ephebes, exactly
the kind of benefaction that was characteristic of Hadrian. He was later to display
especial benevolence to the ancient Dorian colony, now over seven centuries old
and fiercely proud of its status as mother-city of the North African Hellenes.
Apart from this, imperial coins call Hadrian 'the restorer of Libya and he is
known to have founded a new city there. Called after himself, Hadrianopolis
became the sixth member of the previously existing Pentapolis (now renamed
Hexapolis). It was sited on the coast, between Arsinoe or Tauchira (Tocra) and
Berenice (Benghazi), with its water-supply being brought from a spring in 'the
eyebrow of the Gebel' (as later inhabitants would call the lower slopes of the
Green Mountain that rises above the fertile plain). Hadrianopolis was probably
intended to provide a new home for the many Greeks who had lost everything in
the Jewish uprising. Whether or not Hadrian did set foot in Cyrenaica at this
time, he will certainly have been aware o f - and no doubt affected by - extreme
hostility towards the Jews on the part of the Cyrenaican Greeks. 5
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From Apollonia (Marsa Sousa), the port of Cyrene, it can be postulated that
the imperial party sailed across to Crete. The evidence that has been cited to
support a stay by Hadrian on the island is, admittedly, inadequate. It is, at least,
perfectly plausible that he touched Crete and then moved to the north, rather
than hugging the shore of Libya and Egypt, on his way to Syria. Similarly, a visit
to Cyprus is quite possible. The proconsul of the island in 123, it may be noted,
was Calpurnius Flaccus, a Spaniard, son of the man who has been suggested as
Hadrian's host at Tarraco. The 'explorer of all curiosities' ought not to have
missed the chance of seeing the two great islands of the eastern Mediterranean.
Against visits to Crete and Cyprus it can be argued that the Parthian threat was
too important and that Hadrian would have needed to sail east with all possible
speed. But stops along the way were certainly needed - and measures to deal
with the emergency were in hand. Claudius Quartinus had surely gone ahead,
to collect elements of the legion II Traiana from Judaea and III Cyrenaica from
Egypt and then take this force to the Euphrates to await Hadrian. 6
It is a plausible guess that Hadrian was at the Syrian capital in June 123. The
early Byzantine chronicler John Malalas, muddled and incompetent though he
may have been, seems to have much information about Antioch. He reports that
Hadrian founded a 'festival of the springs', to be held each 23 June. It was clearly
to mark the completion of a round of endowments. Extensive rebuilding after
the earthquake eight years earlier must have been very much a necessity. Malalas
lists public baths and an aqueduct, for Antioch, at Daphne 'a theatre of the
springs' and a shrine of the nymphs. The 'Hadrianic Baths' were still in existence
over a century later. Further, the Byzantine encyclopaedia, the Suda, notes
Hadrian's construction of a 'very elegant temple of Trajan' at Antioch to mark
his predecessor's deification. He would have ordered the start of this construc-
tion before leaving Syria in autumn 117. Nearly six years seem long enough for
it to have been completed. Honouring the great conqueror - for all that his last
campaign had ended in near disaster and that Hadrian had abandoned the new
provinces - may have seemed a timely act when a meeting with the Parthian
ruler was about to take place. It is surely no coincidence that the Alexandrian
coinage for the Egyptian year 123-4 commemorated Trajan again. 7
Hadrian must have proceeded to the frontier for the colloquium: traditionally
these diplomatic encounters took place on the Euphrates, with each side coming
across in turn for dinner. The Syrian army will have been there in force, along
with elements of the Guard, the Horse Guards, and Quartinus with his task
force. The army of Cappadocia might well have sent troops as well. W h o was
there on the Parthian side is not further specified. It is assumed that it was the
king - but which king? There were still two rival rulers and it must be guessed
that it was Chosroes that came. He it was, at any rate, who had dealings with
Hadrian five years later, shortly before he disappeared from the scene for good,
leaving his rival Vologaeses unchallenged (for a while). Hadrian had conciliated
Chosroes in 117 by deposing Parthamaspates, his renegade son, whom Trajan
had installed at Ctesiphon as a Roman puppet. But he had given Parthamaspates
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a consolation prize, shoving him into the temporarily vacant principality around
Edessa (Urfa), Osrhoene, the fertile north-west corner of Mesopotamia. For
nearly four years, according to the Edessene records, 118-22, Parthamaspates
reigned jointly with one Ialud, then for another ten months alone. Now the
Abgarid dynasty was restored at Edessa, in the person of Mannus (Ma nu VII
bar Izates). What happened to Parthamaspates is not known. Perhaps the
continued presence of his estranged son on his borders had been the reason for
Chosroes to threaten war. If so, Hadrian settled the matter by giving way. But
on another cause of dissent, nothing is said, although the matter was surely
raised: Chosroes' daughter remained for the time being in Roman hands, as did
the Parthian throne of state. Both had been captured by Trajan, and were
retained as bargaining counters.8
The 'summit' on the Euphrates seems to be reflected in the imperial coinage,
which had for some time continued to announce that Hadrian was on campaign
with the legend expeditio Aug. This must be assumed to cover the visits to
Britain, to Mauretania and to the eastern frontier. Now the god Janus appears
on the coins, a strong hint that Hadrian's warlike activities were coming to an
end. When the gates of Janus' temple - the 'Gates of War' - were closed, peace
reigned throughout the empire. Hadrian is unlikely to have delegated to anyone
else the performance of such a ceremony and our meagre sources do not report
one. The fifth-century historian Orosius, who had special reasons for being
interested in this pagan ritual, complained that he could not recall anything
being said about it being performed between the opening of the Gates by
Vespasian and Titus (presumably in 72) and that by Gordian III (in 242).9
However this may be, Hadrian remained on the frontier. He had no doubt
accompanied Trajan and the army right into Armenia nine years earlier, at the
opening of the War. Now he could survey the northern part of the eastern limes,
in the province of Cappadocia. If, as seems probable, the governor at this time
was his friend Bruttius Praesens, Hadrian was assured of congenial company as
he inspected the garrisons in the Upper Euphrates valley and the sweltering
Anatolian uplands, principally the fortresses of the two legions, XII Fulminata
at Melitene and Satala above the River Lycus in Lesser Armenia, now garrisoned
by XV Apollinaris. At Satala in 114, Hadrian had probably witnessed Trajan
receiving the king of the Heniochi, and gone on with him eastwards to Elegia,
where the annexation of Greater Armenia as a Roman province had been staged.
'Hadrian allowed the Armenians to have a king', the HA reports laconically, but
says no more.10
Hadrian is unlikely to have gone to Elegia this time. Perhaps an Armenian
envoy paid his respects at Satala. It is, indeed, a question whether he went all
along the Euphrates frontier line. He might well have left the difficult Euphrates
route after Melitene and then gone northwest to Sebastia (Sivas), and north to
Neocaesarea in the Lycus valley. Both Neocaesarea and Nicopolis, well to the
east on the Satala road, took additional names in his honour, 'Hadrianopolis'
and 'Hadriane' respectively. This does not prove his presence there. Still,
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Neocaesarea probably got a mention in Book 15 of Phlegon s Olympiads, which
is a pointer to it being on his itinerary before 125. Another town in the region
also began to call itself Hadrianopolis, Amasia, in the valley of the River Iris,
some 70 miles (110 km) west of Neocaesarea. Once again, a visit is not proved,
either at this time or later. The fact that Amasia was the birthplace of the geo-
grapher Strabo may not have meant anything to Hadrian, even though he had
a weakness for literary tourism: hardly anyone seems to have read the copious
Geography, at least until Byzantine times. 11
A few years later Arrian, as governor of Cappadocia, addressed several reports
to Hadrian. His Periplus or Circumnavigation of the Pontus Euxinus opens,
abruptly enough: 'We reached Trapezus [Trebizond], a Greek city, as Xenophon
says, situated on the sea, a colony of the Sinopeans. And it was from the very
same point as did Xenophon - and you - that we looked down with pleasure
on the sea, the Euxine.' Hadrian will have known the famous moment in the
Anabasis when the vanguard of the Ten Thousand reached the summit of
the road over Mount Theches - the Zigana Pass, over 6500 feet (2000 m) above
sea level. 'A great shout went up.' Xenophon and the rearguard assumed there
was an enemy attack. He hurried forward with the cavalry - and then made out
what the men were shouting: 'Thalatta! Thalatta!\ 'The sea! The sea!'
Xenophon and his men had to fight their way down to the coast, where their
fellow-Greeks at Trapezus 'received them kindly, supplying oxen, barley and
wine; and they sacrificed 'to Zeus for deliverance, to Heracles for guidance
and to the other gods as they had vowed.' 12
That Hadrian followed this example is implied by Arrian, who goes on to
report that 'the altars are already set up, but of rough stone and hence the
inscriptions are not cut clearly enough; and there are mistakes in the Greek
inscription {epigramma).' The mason had evidently been a 'barbarian', a non-
Greek. Arrian had had the altars recut, with clear lettering on white stone.
The Greek inscription - the other one was presumably in Latin - may well have
been a verse epigram composed by Hadrian. Arrian goes on to comment on
the temple, 'of squared stone and no mean piece of work' - but the statue of
Hadrian himself, although beautifully positioned, with one hand pointing
out to sea, was a poor likeness and in other respects inadequate. He asked for a
replacement, 'for the place deserves an everlasting memorial.' The statue was
probably designed to point to the new harbour that Hadrian ordered to be built,
which Arrian refers to later in the Periplus. The statue of Hermes was also
unworthy of the shrine and its situation. Arrian asked Hadrian to send a replace-
ment for this too: 'it should be five feet high; also one of Philesius (Apollo), four
feet high.' 13
Hadrian seems, from Arrian's language, to have gone no further east from
Trapezus than the next settlement, just over 20 miles (32 km) along the coast,
the port of Hyssus, where there was an infantry cohort in garrison. Nothing
in Arrian's description of the more distant parts suggests this. He does refer, in
several places, to the native rulers, several of whom are specifically stated to have
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'received the kingship from you', not necessarily all four at the time of Hadrian's
stay at Trapezus, to be sure. Arrian, writing his Periplus a few years later, registers
as recent the death of a more significant client of Rome, the king of the
Cimmerian Bosporus - the Crimea. This was Cotys, whose reign may be dated
to the years 123/4-131/2. He was a descendant of the ruler installed by Julius
Caesar, Asander, who had married Dynamis, granddaughter of Mithridates the
Great. Dynastic links had also been forged later with the kings of Thrace and
Pontus: neither of these client states now existed, but the Bosporan kingdom
survived into the third century AD. Its rulers, Roman citizens since the time of
Tiberius, proudly advertised the titles 'friend of Rome and friend of Caesar'. It
seems clear that Cotys was formally recognised by Hadrian at this time. Phlegon
recorded in Book 15 of his Olympiads that 'Hadrian ordered a diadem to be
brought to Cotys the Bosporan king and placed cities under his rule, including
Cherson.' Cherson, or rather Chersonesus Taurica, was a Greek city of the
Crimea, which had for some time enjoyed independent status. The transfer of
this and other Greek poleis to the kingdom was to ensure their security. It was
no doubt welcome to Cotys; and good relations with the Bosporan kingdom
were important. In effect it ensured that the north shore of the Black Sea was
to all intents and purposes an integral part of the empire. O n the analogy of
British India, it was a 'princely state' under indirect rule. 14
Hadrian's goal after Trapezus was the neighbouring province of Pontus-
Bithynia. In his summary account of the approach to Trapezus along the Black
Sea coast from the west, Arrian adds, 'but I am telling you what you already
know.' Clearly, when Arrian was writing in the early 130s, he was aware that
Hadrian had sailed this way already. Stops at harbours such as Amisus, Sinope,
Amastris and Heraclea Pontica may be inferred. If he chose, Hadrian could
probably have had with him for light reading a copy of a recently published
Latin work, the tenth and last book of the Letters of Plinius Secundus. Pliny had
governed Pontus-Bithynia just over a decade earlier. He had prepared the first
nine books of his letters for publication himself and dedicated them to Septicius
Clarus. Septicius may have edited Book 10, the letters to - and from - Trajan,
almost all from the two years while Pliny was governor. Or, if not Septicius, a
likely editor is Suetonius, who may, indeed, have had a hand in their
composition, for he was evidently on Pliny's staff in the province. At any rate, the
likelihood that Hadrian had seen the collection is strong. 15
Pliny had devoted rather less time to the Pontic half of the double province
than to Bithynia: death cut short his mandate before the end of his second year
as legate. The first Pontic letter concerns Sinope, where he recommended the
construction of a new aqueduct. Trajan had agreed, if they could pay for it. The
only other Pontic cities Pliny mentions were Amisus and Amastris, the latter
described as 'an elegant and ornamental city, among its outstanding features a
very beautiful and very long street' - but the river which flowed throughout its
length was 'in truth a stinking sewer'. Pliny proposed that it should be covered.
Here then were matters for Hadrian to inspect or for the local authorities to raise
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when, for the first time, an emperor visited the region. Hadrian presumably also
read at some point the two letters that precede the one about Amastris: a request
to grant Pliny's protege Suetonius the privileges of a father of three children;
and the long enquiry about the Christians. There were plenty of them around in
Pontus - Sinope had a bishop - but they no doubt were studiously inconspicu-
ous. Pliny had, after all, executed a batch of them; Trajan had approved this
course of action with diehard members of the sect, even if he had specifically
prohibited searching them out and ordered anonymous denunciations of the sect
to be ignored. 16
Further west, Heraclea instituted athletic contests for boys and men in
Hadrian's honour: this might well have been in advance of a visit by him or a
response to his presence. When he reached Bithynia proper, he would be on
familiar ground: he had come there from Syria overland through Cappadocia and
Galatia a few months after his accession six years earlier, and may have been based
for some time at Nicomedia, if not at Byzantium. At any rate, it seems highly
probable that he wintered at Nicomedia on this occasion. For one thing,
Nicomedia (Izmit), which was rivalled for primacy in Bithynia only by its near
neighbour Nicaea (Iznik), was the home of Arrian. It is attractive to speculate
that Arrian, with whom he had so many interests in common, was Hadrian's host
on this occasion, as he might have been in 117. In any case, Nicomedia is the
only city in the empire other than Alexandria which is commemorated on the
imperial coinage: Hadrian is hailed as its 'restorer'. The city had been damaged in
an earthquake shortly before his visit, as had Nicaea. Both were rebuilt with
lavish donations from Hadrian, as late chroniclers explicitly record. Inscriptions
in his honour above the gates of Nicaea supply a specific example of this pro-
gramme. The imperial benefactions to Bithynia were to be commemorated in
coin issues registering his advent and calling him 'restorer' of the province. 17
The earthquake may well have rendered some of the rather numerous
building projects brought to Trajan's attention by Pliny of little more than
academic interest, for example the unfinished aqueduct at Nicomedia or, at
Nicaea, the half-built theatre and badly planned reconstruction of the gym-
nasium. Hadrian may have winced if he noticed one of Trajan's laconic remarks
in response to Pliny: 'These little Greeks - Graeculi - love gymnasia.' After all,
he had in his youth had to put up with the nickname Graeculus. No doubt he
reacted more positively than Trajan did to the opening and closing comments
in one letter, in which Pliny proposed a grandiose scheme to link Lake Sophon,
18 miles (29 km) north-west of Nicomedia, by a canal with the Sea of Marmara.
As I observe your fortune and your greatness of spirit, it seems to me most
fitting to bring to your notice projects which are worthy of your immortal name
and your glory - and which combine beauty with public benefit', he began.
After outlining the scheme, he reported that one of the kings of Bithynia (the
last of whom had bequeathed his kingdom to Rome almost two hundred years
earlier) had begun a canal. But he had either died or simply given up in despair:
'But by this very fact - for you will allow me to be ambitious to further your
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glory - I am inspired, indeed fired, with the wish that something should be
brought to completion by you, which the kings had merely begun.' Peragi a te
quae tantum coeperant reges: this might have been a motto for Hadrian in the
Greek east. 18
Visits to a few other cities in Bithynia may be conjectured, for example to
Bithynium-Claudiopolis (Bolu). Pliny had reported that the people there had
been 'building - or rather excavating - gigantic public baths in a hollow below
the mountain'. He expressed doubts about the financing of the project; the odds
are that it was still in progress. This city also was to take the name Hadriane,
but so did dozens of others. Something else is more important: it was the home-
town of the youth who was to become the object of Hadrian's passion, Antinous.
More specifically, Antinous was a country lad, from the forested uplands of
Bithynium's territory, his home being at a place called Mantinium near the
old border between Bithynia and Paphlagonia. Nothing is said by the sources
about when or where Hadrian first met him. Of the very numerous portraits
of Antinous most are idealised, and depict a youth in his mid-teens, but one,
at least, seems to be of a young man aged about 20. This might permit the
inference that he was with Hadrian for up to seven years - in other words, from
the autumn of 123 or spring of 124 until his death in October 130. Hadrian is
not very likely to have been to Claudiopolis in late 117, on his way from
Ancyra to the Danube. In any case, Antinous was surely too young then - and
Hadrian too preoccupied - for any significant encounter. At all events, it is
plausible that Hadrian first saw him at Claudiopolis, unless it is supposed that
Antinous had been - for example - to Heraclea to compete in the boys' athletics.
But whenever Antinous joined Hadrian, whether in 123-4 or later, his public
presence with the Emperor is nowhere alluded to before the tour of Egypt
in 130. Still, the imperial entourage on these journeys was certainly very
considerable: apart from the military escort, and various officials - including the
Chief Secretary - with their staff, there would be Hadrian's personal household
of freedmen and slaves, and a variety of specialists. The Epitome de Caesaribus,
perhaps deriving from Marius Maximus - and perhaps generalising from one
specific episode - refers to his 'column of companions', agmen comitantium, on
his provincial tours. It adds that he had organised on military lines a team of
'builders, stonemasons, architects and every kind of specialist for constructing
walls or decorating buildings'. The contrast with Trajan, whose reluctance to
second military architects or engineers to his governor Pliny is several times
apparent, could hardly be plainer. Specialists of another kind with the imperial
party would have been huntsmen. Antinous could initially have been taken on
to the imperial staff in this capacity.19
A Bithynian city which should have been favoured with a visit is Apamea, not
just because it was a Roman colony, but for the good reason that its most promi-
nent citizen was a friend and old comrade-in-arms, Catilius Severus. He was the
man to whom Hadrian had handed over the province of Syria at his accession.
Catilius had evidently done his work well: he had been honoured with a second
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consulship in 120. He could well have thought it desirable to sail home to
welcome Hadrian in person. Catilius also had links with Nicaea - and no doubt
property in that city - and could have received Hadrian there too. Other Roman
families at Nicaea could have entertained Hadrian, such as the Cassii, ancestors
of the historian Cassius Dio, with their attractively situated estate on the north
shore of Lake Ascanius, lying between Nicaea and the Sea of Marmara. 20
One might also postulate a visit to Prusa ad Olympum (Bursa), which took
its epithet from the great mountain behind the city, named after the seat of the
gods in the Greek motherland. The sight of this massive peak (Ulu Dag) might
have been enough to attract Hadrian, with his known propensity for scaling
mountains. The famous orator, Dio of Prusa, whom he must have known, was
surely now dead, but his building activities in his home town, which had led to
appeals to the governor Pliny, might have attracted Hadrian's curiosity. Further,
Hadrian is said to have had a close friend called Polyaenus, whose native city
was probably Prusa. At any rate, a prominent Bithynian of this name had been
at Rome in 106-7, appearing before the Senate in the prosecution of the
proconsul Varenus Rufus. A few years later Pliny had to deal with a problem
at Prusa. The house of one Claudius Polyaenus, bequeathed to the Emperor
Claudius - over fifty years before - and thus imperial property, had fallen
into ruin. Claudius Polyaenus had intended a shrine to Claudius to be erected
there, but nothing had been done and Pliny proposed to allocate the site for new
public baths, with a hall and colonnades, dedicated to Trajan. As likely as not,
the site was still in a ruinous state - Trajan's reply had been somewhat less than
whole-hearted. Here was something for Hadrian to inspect. 21
It would have been natural for Hadrian to move on direct from Bithynia into
the next-door province of Asia, where his presence in the summer of 124 is well
documented, from Cyzicus in the north down as far south as Ephesus. But a
source of an unusual nature, written by someone who accompanied Hadrian on
his travels in these parts, the sophist and teacher of rhetoric Polemo, suggests
that before entering Asia Hadrian crossed the Sea of Marmara to Thrace. He
relates how CI once accompanied the greatest of emperors on his travels.' The
episode that he chose to describe took place on a hunt in the province of Asia,
during the journey, which began when we set out from Thrace to Asia, with
soldiers and carriages escorting the emperor.' There seems to be no other journey
which this route fits except the one in 124. Polemo's story is told in his De
Physiognomia, a. work on the detection of character from facial features - which
survives only in Arabic translation; and the place-names that he mentions are
understandably not all at first sight recognisable. 'Thrace', for example, Arabic
Traqa, is an emendation of the manuscript reading Braqa. But the route can be
satisfactorily reconstructed: from Thrace into the province of Asia, then to Ionia,
Sardes and parts of Lydia and Phrygia, from the mainland by sea via the islands
to Rhodes and thence to Athens. 22
Antonius Polemo was about ten years younger than Hadrian. He was one of
the outstanding figures in the Greek world. The family derived from Laodicea
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RETURN TO THE EAST
on the River Lycus on the borders of Phrygia and Caria, where Polemo was born
and with which he retained links. But he was particularly associated with the
glittering coastal city of Smyrna. His ancestor Zeno, known as a gifted orator,
had acquired instant fame by leading the defence of Laodicea against a Parthian
invasion in 41 BC. Zeno's son Polemo had been made ruler of a rump kingdom
of Pontus by the Triumvir Antonius, founding a dynasty which ruled until Nero
absorbed the kingdom into the province of Cappadocia. In the meantime the
family had acquired links with the kings of Thrace and the Crimean Bosporus.
Thus the great sophist of Smyrna was a distant kinsman of the newly enthroned
Cotys - who, indeed, was rash enough to enrol himself as a pupil of Polemo.
He was stung for a fee often talents. It is likely enough that Polemo had joined
Hadrian on this journey precisely in eastern Pontus, where his ancestors had
once ruled. He probably still had estates there. Polemo may have remained with
the imperial party for the journey west along the coast, although it seems
unlikely that he would have spent the winter in Bithynia. At any rate, it is easy
to see why Thrace, also a land where his family had once reigned, would have
been an appropriate place for him to join Hadrian. 2 3
The biographer of the sophists, Philostratus, has a great deal to relate about
Polemo, and makes clear what a dominant figure he was, above all at Smyrna,
where 'by opening his school he benefited the city.' He attracted pupils 'from
continents and islands, select and genuinely Hellenic'; he played a leading
role in the city's government, bringing about internal harmony in a previously
faction-ridden community; and he acted as ambassador for Smyrna at court.
'Hadrian, at any rate, had hitherto favoured Ephesus, but Polemo converted him
to the cause of Smyrna, leading to generous benefactions - this journey was
doubtless the occasion for winning Hadrian's favour. But a switch from favouring
Ephesus to favouring Smyrna need not be taken too literally - or, if there is
anything in it, it will have taken a number of years to implement. 24
The self-confident aristocratic Greek intellectual could be regarded as
arrogant: 'he conversed with cities as his inferiors, with emperors as not his
superiors and with the gods as his equals', Philostratus comments. Trajan, not
noted for his closeness to intellectuals, had favoured the descendants of the old
royal houses of the east, such as Julius Quadratus Bassus, his great marshal.
Polemo, of royal descent as well as being a sophist, even if lacking Quadratus
Bassus' qualifications, obtained a remarkable privilege from Trajan, 'free travel
by land and sea, according to Philostratus. Hadrian extended the right to his
descendants. It presumably meant that, like a Roman office-holder on public
duties, he could use the facilities of the imperial posting-system, the cursus publicus.
Use of that service may not have been quite Polemo s style - but the privilege
probably allowed him to demand accommodation wherever he went. This
could have been expensive. 'He aroused criticism, because when he travelled
he was followed by a long train of baggage-animals, with many horses, servants
and dogs of various breeds for hunting. He himself used to ride in a Phrygian
or Celtic carriage, with silver-mounted bridles.' Such was the aristocratic Greek
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RETURN TO THE EAST
intellectual, with a shared passion for horses, dogs and hunting, who joined
Hadrians entourage.25
What Hadrian did on this visit to Thrace can only be conjectured.
Commemorative coins issued later in the reign give no clues: the personified
province, on one issue represented by a male figure, but otherwise simply a
cloaked female woman with short tunic and no distinctive attribute, is shown
greeting the Emperor, and the legend registers the imperial advent. Another
issue commemorated the army of the province (only a few auxiliary regiments,
no legion). The renaming of Oresta (a city already refounded by Trajan) as
Hadrianopolis (Adrianople) could belong to this time. Further, the seat of the
governor, Perinthus, could hardly have been avoided, even if the erection of
a statue to Hadrian there in 126 is not in itself proof of his presence. A new
legate, Tineius Rufus, arrived in 124, and was perhaps installed by the Emperor
in person. Tineius would receive a peculiarly difficult assignment a few years
later - the province of Judaea. Hadrian's tour of Thrace may have concluded by
the road past Perinthus, through the Claudian colonia of Apri, into the Thracian
Chersonese. This was an unusual district, for it had been imperial domain since
the time of Augustus and was administered by an imperial procurator. One of
the cities on the peninsula, Coela, was converted into a municipium by Hadrian,
an anomalous and unexpected status in a Greek-speaking district. Perhaps there
was a substantial Latin element in the town. Active road-building in Thrace in
124 may also be noted - and the newly installed king of the Bosporus had had
to earn his throne: an inscription from May or June 124 records his victory over
the Scythians of the Crimea, which involved naval operations. Hadrian could
well have deemed it prudent to remain in the neighbourhood. That he went
further north, to the Danube, on this tour, has been postulated, but seems
unlikely. He evidently put the army of the Lower Danube in safe hands by
moving his friend Bruttius Praesens from Cappadocia to govern Moesia Inferior.
Then he could cross to Asia, with Antonius Polemo, with his 'soldiers, carriages'
and a motley company.26
161
14
A SUMMER IN ASIA
Early in 124 it was time to leave Thrace and cross back to Asia, this time to the
Roman province of that name. The first goal should have been Cyzicus. Hadrian
will have seen first the island of Proconessus and behind it the peak of Cyzicus'
peninsula, on which stood the great temple of Zeus. The 'noble city', as Florus
called it, with its citadel and harbour, its walls and marble towers, was the 'glory
of Asia. Cyzicus had long exerted a special appeal for Romans. A senatorial
friend of the poet Propertius stayed there for many years; it had been the home
of a princess from Polemo's family, Antonia Tryphaena, daughter of the King of
Pontus; and the pleasure-loving Licinius Mucianus seems to have gone to
Cyzicus when out of favour with Claudius - he was especially fond of Cyzicene
oysters. But, like Nicaea and Nicomedia, Cyzicus had been ravaged in the recent
earthquake. Help was needed: the Cyzicenes had no doubt already appealed to
the Emperor. 1
Waiting to receive Hadrian and his party as he entered the province would be
not merely notables of the city and of the provincial council but the proconsul,
Hadrian's friend Pompeius Falco, nearing the end to his year of office. But
Falco's wife Polla will not have been by his side - she had died in the province,
leaving Falco a widower with a small son. To make good the destruction caused
by the earthquake would have been enough to earn Hadrian fulsome expressions
of gratitude. But Cyzicus offered an opportunity for something more. The vast
temple of Zeus, begun 300 years earlier by the kings of Pergamum - the queen
of Attalus I, Apollonis, was from Cyzicus - had never been completed. Here was
a challenge for Hadrian. He did not need to have read Pliny's eager appeal to
Trajan 'to bring to completion what the kings had merely begun'. What was
undertaken at Cyzicus as a result of his visit was to be called one of the seven
wonders of the world, 'the largest and most beautiful of all temples', Dio was to
write - and, as it turned out, would not be completed in Hadrian's own life-
time. 2
The temple in its unfinished state was already splendid enough to attract a
notice from the Elder Pliny: its marble blocks were adorned with gold thread.
Hadrian provided funds on a lavish scale, but the whole province also
contributed, for Cyzicus was now granted the coveted role of neocorus, Temple
162
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A SUMMER IN ASIA
Warden of the imperial cult, joining Pergamum, Ephesus, Smyrna and Sardes.
Hadrian himself was to share the temple with Zeus - his colossal statue was to
be set on the pediment. The finished temple was built on three levels, the total
effect being called labyrinthine because of the vaulted underground aisles,
where, it appears, mysteries were celebrated. The sixty massive columns which
surrounded the inner shrine {cella) were well over 6 feet (2 m) in diameter and
more than 65 feet (21 m) high. 3
As well as this great undertaking, Cyzicus evidently gained other marks of
imperial favour. The city took the name 'Hadriane' and started athletic contests
named 'Hadriania'; and a temple of Demeter first attested on the city's coins in
his reign presumably owed at least its completion to him. The neighbouring
cities of Apollonia and Miletopolis also benefited from Hadrians presence in the
area: at least, both called him 'Saviour and Founder'. But however exciting the
project at Cyzicus, Hadrian can hardly have stayed more than a few weeks there.
Other parts of the 'land of five hundred cities', as the province of Asia was
described - with a little exaggeration - awaited him. His route seems to have
taken him along the coast westwards, crossing the River Granicus, allowing the
opportunity to inspect the site of Alexander's first great victory, and on to
Parium, where Caesar had founded a colonia. At any rate, Parium took the name
'Hadriana and Hadrian is called 'founder', conditor coloniae. Following in the
footsteps of Alexander after the Granicus, Hadrian was aiming for Troy. Here,
where the little city of Ilium proudly boasted its status as the home of Rome's
Trojan ancestors, he inspected the crumbling tomb which was alleged to be that
of the Achaean hero Ajax, and ordered it to be rebuilt. A little further down the
coast, was the place founded by Alexander's successors, then re-established as a
Roman colonia, Alexandria in the Troad. This city was to honour Hadrian as
restitutor, although his major benefactions took some years to implement. 4
The next stage of the journey was to be devoted to the mountainous wooded
interior, and to hunting. 'He founded a town, Hadrianutherae, in a certain
place', the HA biographer reports, 'because he had had successful hunting
there and had on one occasion killed a she-bear.' Hadrianutherae (Balikesir), in
the fertile plain of central Mysia, would commemorate its founder with bronze
coins showing the mounted Emperor, with the head of his prey on the reverse.
As the HA tells the story, the action was an autocrat's whim. But this part of
Mysia was ripe for such action. He was later to found two further new cities in
the fertile plains enclosed by the primeval forests: Hadriania (Balat), between the
Rivers Macestus and Rhyndacus, and Hadriani (Orhaneli) at the foot of
Olympus. 5
It was perhaps somewhere in the mountains of Mysia that the curious episode
described by Polemo in his De physiognomia took place. He wishes to demon-
strate that small, deepset eyes are the mark of an evil character. He 'once met a
man from Qwrnyri - the name as rendered in Arabic has been variously
emended, but is presumably that of a place somewhere in Mysia - with such
eyes, and other dangerous facial characteristics,
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A SUMMER IN ASIA
an insolent man, of gross shamelessness, one who stirred up trouble
against authority, a man that people shunned, who hated those who are
loyal, bold when it came to dishonourable acts, never ceasing to inflict
harm on his own comrades - and lastly, drunken and of ungovernable
rage.
After setting the scene by describing how he accompanied 'the greatest of

emperors from Thrace to Asia and briefly outlining the itinerary, he returns to
his theme. 'When we had come to Asia, then, I stayed with that man' -
presumably in unawareness of his true character. Perhaps Polemo had not yet
studied physiognomy.
There he was with his companions, armed, surrounding the Emperor -

and that was in no way to show honour to the Emperor or because he was
well disposed towards him. No, he was looking for a chance of doing him
harm and carrying out his evil designs, which allowed him no rest.
Further, he had his companions in wickedness with him, whose chief and
master he was. This was our situation then: the Emperor was preoccupied
with his preparations, energetically getting ready to set off hunting, so that
we had no chance of engaging him in conversation. My friends and I were
sitting talking and exchanging views about the Emperor - what an uneasy
position he was in, how far removed from the pleasant life people used to
say he enjoyed. As our conversation continued, we also mentioned that
man
and all expressed amazement at his shamelessness. In the middle of this conver-
sation, someone startled them by coming out of the trees:
It was the evil fellow we had been talking about: he had crept up like a
snake to eavesdrop. All that could not have been about anyone except
me', he said. 'We did mention you, I said, 'and expressed amazement
at your manner. Out with it, then! Tell us how you have imposed this
burden on yourself and how you can bear such tensions in your soul/
This resulted in an instant outburst. He had a demon in him, the man
admitted, that was responsible for the evil desire in his soul, he began to
weep - 'Woe is me, I am destroyed!' 6
This curious story can hardly be called evidence for a plot against Hadrian's
life, let alone, as was once claimed, to portray an alleged attempt on Hadrian's life
by Lusius Quietus in late 117. It reads rather more like an attempt by the
arrogant Polemo to discredit someone who had proved an ill-tempered and
discourteous - and perhaps drunken - host, when obliged to give Polemo
hospitality. That he and his followers looked threatening as they stood around
Hadrian, bearing arms, can hardly be taken seriously when a hunting-party,
suitably equipped, was preparing to set off. All the same, Nigrinus was alleged to
have plotted to kill Hadrian on a hunt or at a sacrifice before the hunt.
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A SUMMER IN ASIA
A deranged slave had attacked Hadrian at Tarraco the previous year - and that
autumn, at Athens, it would be noticed that the knives normally carried at
religious ceremonies were banned. 7
It may be added that Polemo took the opportunity, in the same work, of
portraying another person he disliked, his rival Favorinus - again unnamed - in
highly unflattering terms. Hadrian, by contrast, is praised for his shining eyes,
the sign of a pure and spotless character (the only such example in the entire De
pbysiognomid). Hadrian's eyes, indeed, are described as possessing exactly the
characteristics of a true 'Hellene and Ionian, as a later writer, Adamantius,
defined them, 'languishing, bright, piercing and full of light'. 8
From Hadrianutherae Hadrian's route seems to have taken him south up the
River Macestus and across the watershed to the upper Caicus valley, where he
stayed at Stratonicea. Once again, it is clear, he indulged his passion for hunting
- and he was to grant the place the status of a city and the name Hadrianopolis:
a few years later the people of the city honoured him as their founder under the
name Zeus the Hunter (Cynegesius). From a letter of Hadrian's written from
Rome four years later, in response to a petition from Stratonicea, it has been
inferred that he stayed during this visit in the house of a certain Ti. Claudius
Socrates - and that the building was subsequently consecrated, although
nothing is said about these matters in the letter, which deals merely with the
need to repair the building. 9
As yet there is no explicit record of Hadrians presence at Pergamum, but he
cannot have been in this part of Asia without visiting the once royal city. He
might, indeed, have been there before going to hunt in Mysia. Whichever route
he followed, he must have doubled back at least for part of the journey, along the
Caicus valley. Since his general plan on this occasion seems to have been to tour
the northern part of the province, it seems logical that his hunting in
the mountains of Mysia would have come first. There was much for him to
see and to admire at Pergamum, a very considerable metropolis with well over
a hundred thousand inhabitants: not least its celebrated shrines, of Zeus and
Athena, of Asclepius, of Sarapis - and of Trajan. O n the acropolis, beside the
citadel or palace of the kings, where Hadrian presumably stayed, stood the
colossal altar of Zeus and Athena, adorned with reliefs celebrating King Eumenes
II's victory over the barbaric Celtic hordes three centuries earlier. The temple of
Trajan was to be even larger. It was evidently conceived as a temple of Trajan and
of Zeus Philius - the god of friendship. Did this perhaps reflect Trajan's close ties
with the Pergamenes Julius Quadratus and Quadratus Bassus? However this may
be, the plan was altered. The great sanctuary was to be turned into a shrine for
Trajan and Hadrian together, their colossal statues, well over twice lifesize, seated
on either side of the inner cella. There was no room left for Zeus Philius. As the
enormous edifice was built of gleaming white marble, its appearance would
outshine the other buildings on the acropolis, with their grey or pink stone. 10
Pergamum had early on had a temple to the goddess Roma and took a
prominent part in the imperial cult from its inception - not for nothing had the
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A SUMMER IN ASIA
author of the Revelation told the church at Pergamum that 'thou dwellest where
Satan's throne is.' It now enjoyed the superior status of 'double Temple
Wardenship'. Shrines to other deities were being enlarged or constructed at
Pergamum. The Asclepieum, which went back over five hundred years, was to
become a vast complex, where the wealthy and cultivated elite came to take the
cure. Hadrian was to be honoured there as 'a god most manifest, a New
Asclepius'. The epithet 'most manifest' could be taken to confirm that Hadrian
had indeed made a personal appearance in the city.11
Apart from inspecting the royal library in the temple of Athena, once famous
for its 200,000 books - of parchment, Pergamum's own substitute for papyrus
- Hadrian will have found cultivated and prominent persons to entertain him.
Quadratus Bassus, whose monument he will have inspected, had been only
one of a now numerous body of eminent dignitaries who resided in this city. It
was probably not a coincidence that a member of a Pergamene family became
consul the next year. This was L. Cuspius Camerinus, probably (to judge from
his names) the descendant of an Italian trading family that had been settled at
Pergamum for many generations. Camerinus' son Rufinus, thus 'ennobled' by
his father's elevation, was to become consul ordinarius early in the next reign.
Cuspius Rufinus' grandiose benefactions were to transform the great shrine of
Asclepius - and testify to the considerable wealth of this family.12
An indirect beneficiary of Hadrian's visit, it can be inferred, was the young
architect Aelius Nico, who will have prospered from the ambitious building
programme. His name Aelius indicates the grant of citizenship from Hadrian.
Nico's son Galenus, born five years after Hadrian's visit, will not have known
the Emperor. Still, it is strange that in his voluminous writings the great doctor
seldom finds occasion to mention Hadrian, and the fullest mention is an
unfriendly anecdote. It is a legitimate guess that Nico or other members of
Galen's family - or older friends - had passed on unfavourable recollections of
Hadrian and used to tell the story because the incident took place at Pergamum.
Hadrian the Emperor, so it is related, once struck one of his attendants in

the eye with a pen. When he found out that the man had lost the sight of
this eye as a result, he summoned him and invited him to request a gift.
But the man stayed silent. Hadrian repeated the offer, then the man said
that all he wanted was to get his eye back.
Galen supplies maddeningly few details, but at least he shows us Hadrian

writing with his own hand, rather than dictating - and perhaps, if the incident
did take place at Pergamum, with an iron nibbed pen rather than a stylus, to
write with ink on parchment. But it is impossible to guess whether what he was
writing was official or private. Further, although Galen implies that Hadrian hit
his attendant - no doubt a slave - in an outburst of rage, it could well have been
an accident. 13
From the acropolis at Pergamum Hadrian could have looked far across the
Caicus plain to the sea coast and the Gulf of Mytilene. Although numerous
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A SUMMER IN ASIA
inscriptions attest the loyal gratitude of the island of Lesbos, and especially
Mytilene, its principal city, they cannot in themselves prove a visit. The title
'Liberator' (Eleutherius) under which he was worshipped at Mytilene suggests
that he may have awarded it the status of a Tree city'. It is more probable that
the next stage of his journey took him inland again, to Sardes - at least, the
admittedly amended Arabic text of Polemo's De physiognomia attests his presence
there. It seems reasonable to suggest that he went by road along the Caicus valley,
turning southwards by Germe, with Thyatira (Akhisar) as a halfway station.
Thyatira and Nacrasa, which lies a little east of the main highway, supply
testimony of public and private devotion to Hadrian for benefits received. There
are indications that he may have made an extensive detour eastwards. The city of
Saittae, lying between the upper reaches of the River Hermus and its tributary the
Hyllus, struck coins which were surely intended to commemorate his visit. The
obverse shows a bust of Hadrian, the reverse the personified city shaking hands
with the Emperor. The indications in Polemo's De physiognomia that Hadrian
travelled from Thrace to Ionia, visiting Phrygia and Lydia, including Sardes,
favour a detour in this direction. Lydian Saittae was in the region known as
the 'burnt land', katakekaumene, which was marked by the traces of extinct
volcanoes. North-western Phrygia also belonged to the 'burnt land'. Hadrian
perhaps went right up to the headwaters of the Hermus, to ascend the Phrygian
Mount Dindymus. If he was as far inland as this, he presumably approached
Sardes from the east, along the valley of the Hermus. 1 4
The former Lydian capital on the River Pactolus, a far older city than
Pergamum, but by now of lesser standing, did still produce notable figures, the
grandest of whom, Ti. Julius Celsus Polemaeanus, had been one of the earliest
of all the Greeks to become consul, back in the year 92. But Polemaeanus was
now dead - and in any case he had transferred his affections to Ephesus. One
of the current Sardes notables, Julius Pardalas, a Roman knight, was certainly
absent in 124: he had just taken up a high position in Egypt. It had been to a
man from Sardes, Menemachus, that Plutarch addressed his essay Precepts of
Statecraft, designed to bring home to the Greeks the realities and limitations of
public life under Roman rule. After some preliminary reflections, he comes to
the point:
But now - when the affairs of cities do not include leadership in wars or
the overthrowing of a tyranny or concluding alliances - what positions are
left for a conspicuous and brilliant public career? There are public lawsuits
- and embassies to the emperor.
After more examples from both Greek and Roman history, Plutarch admits that
the sort of activity now left to the Greek statesman, such as he himself under-
takes in his home town - supervising public building - may seem ridiculous or
trivial, but should not be despised.
At all events, Menemachus should remember not only what Pericles used to
tell himself - 'Take care: you are ruling free men, you are ruling Greeks,
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A SUMMER IN ASIA
Athenian citizens' - he should also remind himself that 'You who rule as an
office-holder are yourself under the rule of proconsuls, of imperial procurators.
These are not "the spearmen of the plain", nor is this ancient Sardes nor the
famed power of the Lydians . . . ' Menemachus should remember, as he carries
out his duties, to 'look at the shoes of Roman magistrates just above your head
. . . Many have experienced "the dread chastiser, the axe that cleaves the neck",
as did your fellow-citizen Pardalas and his followers when they forgot the limits
of their position.' Pardalas, it emerges later - perhaps father of the high official
Julius Pardalas - had nearly brought about the destruction of Sardes 'by
involving it in rebellion and war' (the circumstances are unknown).
According to Plutarch, Greeks in public life should avoid cause for blame
with the 'rulers' - but should take care to have friends in high places, 'for the
Romans are always eager to promote the political interests of their friends.'
Favours for one's city are worth far more than procuratorships and provincial
governorships which bring handsome profits. The Greek statesman should be
obedient to Rome - but not servile: 'those who invite the sovereign's decision
on every decree, assembly meeting, privilege, administrative measure, force him
to be more of a master than he wishes.' 15
Plutarch had written these words about twenty-five years before. The old man
was almost certainly dead by now - but Hadrian had known and valued him:
it had been Plutarch who had set up a statue at Delphi to celebrate Hadrian's
accession, and Hadrian had awarded him some official status. So it may be
imagined that he had read the essay and in any case would be only too well
aware of the sentiments expressed. He could not cure the Greek inter-city
competitiveness, which his travelling companion Polemo, no doubt bursting to
get Hadrian to Smyrna, exemplified in extreme form. Hadrian certainly failed
in the short term to make the Greeks less abject towards the ruling power. He
would in due course evolve a programme to instil in them a sense of pride
in Hellenism. In the meantime, it may be noted that under his rule the Greeks
continued their expansion into every echelon of the Roman ruling elite. The
astonishing career of the great Pergamene magnate, Quadratus Bassus, had,
indeed, shown that a Greek could take high command in Rome's wars. At a
more modest level, further advance was still possible. At about this time,
Hadrian nominated a new legate for the legion III Augusta, in effect governor
of Numidia. It was Julius Major, a man from Asian Nysa, descendant of
Polemo's ancestor the King of Pontus. Another appointment, which in theory
Hadrian did not control directly, had perhaps gone through the previous year:
Arrian became proconsul of Hispania Baetica, the home province of Hadrian's
own family. That Greeks should hold high office not merely in the east but in
the far-off Latin west was a real sign that the times were changing. It would not
be long before a young Pergamene, Claudius Charax, would be commanding
one of the legions in Britain. 16
Sardes could boast a poet of some quality at the time of Hadrian, a man
called Strato. There is no direct evidence that Hadrian met him or knew his
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A SUMMER IN ASIA
work, but the almost exclusive theme of Strato s verse could have appealed to the
imperial visitor. Nearly one hundred of his epigrams survive: his 'heart had no
place for the love of women, he was 'afire with an unquenchable flame for
boys'.17
Sardes had special historical interest and heights to climb: the Persian
fort perched on the crag above the great temple of Demeter combined both.
There is an inscription in Hadrian's honour from Trocetta on Mount Tmolus,
naming the proconsul Falco, but this probably predated Hadrian's arrival, for
Falco's year of office may be assumed to have ended in the spring of 124. His
successor, Peducaeus Priscinus, was no doubt in attendance now. A dedication
to Hadrian and Sabina on the north-west slope of Mount Tmolus, facing
the Smyrna road, may suggest the imperial presence - and that Sabina was
there too.18
At any rate, is was surely in this direction, to Smyrna, that the imperial party
turned next. With Polemo in Hadrian's company, expectations at Smyrna must
have been high. A colossal sum of money was duly disbursed - ten million
drachmae, for the construction of a grain-market and of a gymnasium grander
than any other in the province, also for the temple of Zeus high up above the
Gulf. Precious marble columns - from imperial quarries - were made available,
not merely from nearby Phrygian Synnada, but the prized red ones from
Numidia, and porphyry too, from Egypt. Polemo was entrusted with the
funds in person. Smyrna was granted a second Temple Wardenship (formal
approval from the Roman Senate was duly obtained): the new imperial cult was,
of course, of Hadrian himself. A twenty-four strong choir was formed to hymn
the God Hadrian and the grateful city duly called itself 'Hadriane'. In a
fragmentary official letter written in this year, mentioning the establishment of
the choir - a copy was set up on stone at Smyrna - there is also comment
on the 'most happy times of the Emperor Hadrian, in which the whole world
sacrifices and prays that he may live for ever and reign victoriously' Another
inscription listed benefactions from individuals and groups, 'and what we
have gained from the Lord Emperor Caesar Hadrian through Antonius Polemo'
(a list follows).19
Polemo may have claimed that he won over Hadrian to favour Smyrna rather
than Ephesus. At this stage, at least, Ephesian priority was clear, apart from the
second Temple Wardenship: the visit there was to be the culmination of this tour
of the Asian province. Ephesus had, for one thing, been much favoured by
Augustus, which was an added reason for the 'new Augustus' to be attracted to
this city, which proclaimed itself'the first and greatest Mother City of Asia'. The
approach was to be by sea, as can be inferred from an inscription at Erythrae on
the coast facing Chios. The city actually founded a 'Hadrianic Landing Festival'
(Hadrianeia Epibaterid) to commemorate his disembarkation there. Hadrian
must have sailed out of the Gulf of Smyrna, around the Black Promontory and
through the straits of Chios. No longer of any particular importance, Erythrae
was nonetheless one of the original twelve members of the Ionian League and
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had a proud history to look back on. The Ionian League certainly appealed to
Hadrian: he was to be honoured with the name 'Panionios'. Erythrae also, in
common with several other places in Ionia, Smyrna and Chios to the fore,
claimed to be the birthplace of Homer. That would hardly have impressed
Hadrian - he rejected Homer in favour of Antimachus of Colophon, and him-
self wrote a work called Catachannae, 'medley', in imitation of that poet, 'whose
very name was unknown to many', Dio claims. Still, Plato had admired
Antimachus and Quintilian had praised his 'forcefulness, gravity and style that
was anything but vulgar', even if Plutarch thought his strength and vigour were
rather laboured. Perhaps Hadrian took to Antimachus' Artemis, presumably a
poem in honour of the virgin huntress. 20
Where the imperial flotilla put in to land after Erythrae is a matter of guess-
work: Teos is probable enough, likewise Notium, once an Athenian naval base
and the scene of a famous Athenian defeat in 407 BC. Notium was the port of
Colophon, which still asserted a leading role in the Ionian League and might
also have hoped for a visit - because of Antimachus (even though Colophon
also claimed Homer). Be this as it may, it is hard to deny Hadrian a call at the
famous oracle of Apollo at Claros, also in the territory of Colophon and not
far from the coast. At any rate, a gigantic inscription at the shrine - dwarfing
the majority of the very numerous dedications in tiny and elegant lettering -
proclaims his benefaction. As it happens, Tacitus - who had probably visited
the oracle himself ten years earlier when proconsul of Asia - was at about this
time writing an account of a famous Roman's consultation of Apollo at Claros
- Germanicus Caesar, on his ill-fated eastern mission. After the statutory stop
at Ilium, Germanicus went to Colophon to make use of the oracle. Tacitus
notes that 'it is not a woman there [that gives the responses], as at Delphi.' A
priest chosen from certain families (mostly from Miletus) would listen to the
questions, descend into a cave, drink the water of a secret spring and produce
the response in verse from whatever came into his head - most of them were
illiterate, he comments acidly.21
For Hadrian's presence at Ephesus itself there is firm evidence. O n 29 August
124 Hadrian had occasion to write to the 'magistrates, council and people of the
Termessians', that is, the little town of Oenoanda in northern Lycia, signifying
his approval for the establishment of a musical competition there. The
Termessians had sent three delegates to Hadrian. The letter that they took back
with them ends 'from Ephesus'. How long Hadrian stayed at Ephesus, exactly
what he did on this first visit, whether he made excursions to Samos across the
bay or to Magnesia on the Maeander a few miles inland, all this is largely
conjectural. Further, since Ephesus, exceptionally, was to be honoured with a
second visit five years later, it is hard to say which of the acts of imperial
generosity there belong to 124 and which to 129. 22
A marked feature of Ephesus, distinguishing it from its rivals among
the major cities of Asia, was the large number of resident Romans of Italian
origin. The great trading city lay at the western end of a major route from the
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A SUMMER IN ASIA
Euphrates and although its harbour at the mouth of the Cayster was
continually silting up, its attraction for immigrants remained. Expatriate Italian
families like the Gavii were now well to the fore: Gavius Bassus had been
prefect of the classis Pontica when Pliny was governing Pontus-Bithynia a dozen
years earlier. His brother Balbus and his son Maximus were already launched
on equestrian careers - Maximus would rise to the summit. The leading
Ephesian families had to wait, it is true, for several generations before one of
their number reached the highest rank in the senatorial career, the consulate.
For the Greeks in the Senate the advantage still went to the grandees of royal
descent like Quadratus Bassus of Pergamum or Celsus Polemaeanus of Sardes.
Still, Celsus had elected Ephesus as his residence and Hadrian will have been
able to admire the beautiful library which Celsus' son was building there in
memory of his father.23
It may have been at this time that Hadrian selected a new member of his staff.
T. Petronius Priscus, who had been serving as procurator in the province Asia,
was honoured with a marble statue at Ephesus on his promotion to be Hadrian's
Secretary for Petitions, a libellis. Petitions would certainly have flowed in regu-
larly and an Emperor on the move was likely to be approached by provincials
everywhere he went. Dio tells how 'once, when a woman approached him as he
was passing by on a journey, he said to her, at first, "I don't have time" - but
then, when she cried out, "Then stop being emperor!", he turned back and let
her speak.' Very similar stories are told about several Greek rulers, but Dio's
anecdote is likely to be genuine for all that. 24
Ephesus, like Pergamum and Smyrna, would receive a second Temple
Wardenship from Hadrian, but not at the time of this first visit. In the mean-
time he received honours of the usual effusive kind. An inscription recalls how
'when T. Flavius Potamo was gymnasiarch and the Lord Emperor Traianus
Hadrianus Sebastus was staying in the city, the ephebes sang a hymn' for the
Emperor - who 'listened to it with pleasure.' The ceremony in the theatre
- where Paul had once faced the wrath of the silversmiths and the repeated cry
'Great is Diana of the Ephesians' - was suitably followed by rites in the famous
temple of Artemis just outside the city.25
Hadrian sailed from Ephesus to Rhodes. The HA biographer has actually
preserved a tiny trace of this journey: 'he sailed by Asia and the islands to
Achaia.' Rhodes is specifically mentioned in Polemo's account and the visit is
confirmed by letters of Hadrian written a few years later. He commended two
men he 'sailed with from Ephesus to Rhodes', Erastus and Philocyrius. The
coinage of Alexandria at this time suitably illustrated the Emperor's activity with
'an imperial galley, with square sail, small sail on bowsprit, and pennant.'
Hadrian himself will have sailed on an imperial warship; Erastus, Philocyrius
and other merchant captains will have transported lesser members of the
entourage and necessary supplies. There was hardly time for serious stops on
the way - much as Miletus, the last major city yet to see Hadrian, may have
hoped for a visit. The Milesians would have to wait. But Cos would have been
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a convenient staging-post, even Halicarnassus, for that matter - the imperial
tourist would have appreciated the famous Mausoleum - or Cnidus. 2 6
As for Rhodes, there is a peculiar story in the early Byzantine chronicler John
Malalas that Hadrian organised the re-erection of the Colossus, which had
been toppled by an earthquake a good three hundred years earlier. Malalas even
purports to know about the inscription which commemorated the massive
undertaking. The team of architects, engineers and craftsmen that the Epitome
reports Hadrian to have taken round the empire with him might very well all
have been dispersed by this time on other building projects, from Cyzicus south-
wards. Malalas claims that the inscription registered an imperial donation of
'three centenarid (3 million sesterces?) to pay for the engines, ropes and crafts-
men. Colossus aside - and it has to be admitted that a project of this sort would
have appealed to Hadrian - there was enough on Rhodes to attract him. The
island had been Rome's ally for nearly three hundred years and still enjoyed this
status; its links with Rome were for that reason closer and deeper than was the
case with most of the other Greek communities. Hadrian may be imagined
to have inspected the house where a famous Roman had lived for six years
- Tiberius, Augustus' stepson, in resentful self-imposed exile. But, although
Rhodes had a priest of the goddess Roma and festivals with the telling names of
Romaea and Caesarea, a certain resistance to Roman culture has been detected
there. Roman citizens were not numerous - and there were no gladiatorial shows
(for which abstinence Dio of Prusa had praised the Rhodians a generation
earlier). Tiberius and Hadrian were seen by Tacitus, then - surely - still writing
his Annals, as kindred spirits, both philhellenes with intellectual interests
(including astrology), both complex and tortuous characters. Hadrian, whose
policies in certain respects at least (notably avoidance of imperial expansion)
resembled the successor of Augustus, may have found much of interest here.
Perhaps he knew the epigram of Apollonides, recalling a favourable omen - an
eagle - that appeared at Rhodes 'when [Tiberius Claudius] Nero held the island
of the sun' and naming Augustus' stepson 'the future Zeus'. 27
Time must have been found for dealing with imperial business. Throughout
Hadrian's long absences from Rome the centre of the empire had to move with
him. Regular attention needed to be given to the filling of posts at all levels. It
was about now that Bruttius Praesens was moved from Cappadocia to Moesia
Inferior, replacing the excellent Ummidius Quadratus. Not much happens to be
known about the governors of other provinces. Platorius Nepos was still coping
with the giant Wall in Britain in 124 - it was causing problems and various
modifications to the original concept were required. Hadrian was certainly kept
informed by his friend. As for the high equestrians, Haterius Nepos, who had
been Prefect of Egypt since 120, was probably replaced in 124. His successor is
unknown (a rarity for that well-documented province). At Rome itself, Annius
Verus was to lay down the City Prefecture, after a seven-year tenure, which had
clearly won approval; and Marcius Turbo was there, commanding the Guard.
Whether a second Prefect was with Hadrian is not recorded - but elements of
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the Guard would certainly have been with the Emperor, perhaps commanded
by a tribune.28
Rhodes cannot have detained Hadrian for long, in any case. He sailed from
there, via the Cyclades no doubt, to Athens, as both the HA and Polemo attest,
and is unlikely to have set off much after mid-September. He intended to be
there for the Eleusinian Mysteries, which began in the month Boedromion.29
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A YEAR IN GREECE
It was some eleven years since Hadrian had left Athens, to participate in Trajan's
Parthian expedition. Virtually nothing is known about how he had spent his
time in Greece then. It is natural to suppose that he had taken the chance to
visit at least a few of the other cities apart from Athens, where he had been
archon. This time, as Emperor, he had far more scope and he was to travel
widely in the Peloponnese and in central Greece. But first came the initiation
into the Mysteries. He might, indeed, have undergone the preliminary initiation
- as was normally prescribed - into the Lesser Mysteries at Agrae when he was
archon; but if so no record of it has survived. In any case, the sources suggest
that he was already Emperor when initiated into both grades. Now, presumably
with a dispensation exempting him from the Agrae rituals, he could reach the
first grade, becoming a mystes. The ceremonies lasted a whole week, beginning
with the journey of the young men, the ephebes, to collect the sacred objects
from Eleusis. Normally they were armed. In the year 124 they were obliged to
forego their weapons, so the HA has it: 'During this stay in Achaia care was
taken, they say, that when Hadrian was present none should enter armed,
whereas generally many used to carry knives at religious ceremonies.' Recent
incidents had had their impact. 1
It may be assumed that the other rituals followed the normal pattern, with an
assembly, from which murderers and barbarians were debarred, a ritual bath in
the sea, with sacrifices to Demeter and to Kore, and finally the great procession
of the worshippers, wearing their saffron ribbons and myrtle crowns, 14 miles
(22 km) from Athens to Eleusis, ending in darkness, by torchlight. Hadrian
'undertook the Eleusinian rites following the example of Hercules and Philip',
the HA says. A twelve-line poem composed by the priestess, hierophantis,
who had the honour of making the Emperor a member of the cult, also alludes
to Hercules. It was not the Dioscuri nor Asklepios nor Herakles that she had
initiated, but 'Hadrian, the Lord of the wide earth, who poured out boundless
wealth on all cities, and especially on the city of Cecrops.' Quite why the prece-
dents of Hercules and Philip of Macedon get a mention in the HA is not clear.
Hercules is one thing: his part in the legend of the Mysteries was well established.
But Philip of Macedon, Athens' enemy, is a different matter - and there is no
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Map 5 Greece and Macedonia
other evidence that he was initiated at Eleusis anyway. Still, the Macedonian royal
house claimed descent from Hercules, so perhaps Philip was initiated after all.
Besides this, he was regarded as a champion of panhellenism. It is probable
enough that the 'example of Hercules and Philip' derived ultimately from
Hadrian's autobiography. Hadrian would have been well aware that Augustus had
also been initiated. Perhaps he thought that the Athenians would prefer to be
reminded of authentic Greek examples of great figures from outside Athens
coming to be initiated. As it happens, the name of Philip has been emended
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to that of Philopappus. This was the grandson of the last client king of
Commagene, C. Julius Antiochus Philopappus, who, although he had been
a senator, and consul the year after Hadrian, in 109, had lived many years at
Athens. Philopappus' sister Balbilla turns up a few years later as a close friend of
the Empress Sabina. But it seems unlikely that Hadrian, even if Philopappus had
been his close friend, would have cited him in the same breath as Hercules. 2
Nothing is said in any of the sources about where Hadrian stayed when he
was in Athens. The Athenian aristocrat whom Hadrian had encountered six
years before in Pannonia as a nervous young delegate of his city, Herodes
Atticus, was shown special favour at this time. He had been given senatorial rank
and was now to begin his senatorial career as quaestor - of the Emperor, the
most honoured status possible: inter amicos, among the Emperor's friends, an
inscription of Herodes adds. Herodes' father Atticus had in the meantime been
adlected to the senate with the rank of ex-praetor. These two were no doubt in
close attendance on Hadrian throughout his stay in Greece. The odds are that
they acted as hosts to the Emperor and that his plans for the city were worked
out in part at least in discussion with them. A few years earlier the Athenians
had formally requested Hadrian 'to reform their laws'. The 'free city' was by now
very much dependent on Rome. It was no doubt an Athenian who undertook
suitable research into the ancient laws of Dracon and Solon, probably a man
called Annius Pythodorus, who is given the title nomothetes on an inscription of
this time. One result was that the number of members of the Council was
brought down from 600 to to 500, the size it had been under Cleisthenes'
dispensation. Cleisthenes had introduced the ten phylae, tribes, named after
ancient Attic heroes, but there were by now two extra; one more, the thirteenth,
was added, bearing Hadrian's name. It took the central, seventh place in the
listing. Other reforms had a financial impact, notably a measure regulating the
price of locally produced olive oil. This echoed a famous law of Solon. A new
tax exemption for sellers offish may have been intended to ensure ready supplies
at the time of the Mysteries. At Eleusis itself Hadrian had a bridge built over
the River Cephisus. Further measures would soon follow: the HA, like the
hierophantis, specifically refers to Hadrian 'dispensing many favours to the
Athenians.' But he was to spend a considerable time in the city, which must have
been his main base during this stay. The major building programme which he
initiated at Athens is best considered later.3
In the autumn of 124 he undertook an extensive tour of the Peloponnese. His
presence at a string of famous cities at this time is well attested, even if the exact
order is not quite certain in all cases. Apart from the record of inscriptions, some
dated, there is the precious witness supplied by Pausanias in the Guide to Greece
that he wrote a generation later. Again and again he refers to the results of
Hadrian's visit: in particular, to temples and other monuments restored on his
initiative and at his expense. Hadrian's first stop was at Athens' western neigh-
bour and old enemy, Megara. The bad relations, which had reached a low point
in the fifth century BC, still prevailed. Philostratus reports how a contemporary
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of Hadrian, the sophist Marcus of Byzantium (a colony of Megara), persuaded
the Megarians to modify their hostility to Athens. They agreed at least to admit
Athenians and their families into their houses. As at Athens, the Megarians
created a new phyle, in their case a fourth, named Hadrianis. Megarian inscrip-
tions from the late 130s honour Hadrian as 'their founder, lawgiver, benefactor
and fosterer'. He had clearly implemented reforms as well as building work.
Sabina was also honoured at Megara, as a 'New Demeter', from which one may
guess that she had accompanied her husband. Pausanias specifically refers to the
rebuilding of the formerly brick temple of Apollo in white stone, no doubt
the 'shell stone' which he remarks on as a special feature at Megara. He also
mentions the road from Megara to Corinth, formerly passable by foot only, but
widened by Hadrian so that chariots could drive along it in opposite directions.
An inscription dated to the following year, 125, probably belonged to the first
milestone of this road. Hadrian may indeed have issued an edict ordering road
improvements all over Achaia and Macedonia at this time. But at Megara, in
spite of Hadrian's best efforts, according to Pausanias, he experienced 'his only
failure in Greece: even he could not make them thrive.' 4
From Megara the imperial party proceeded over the Isthmus to Epidaurus.
The city erected a statue to him in 124, calling him 'its saviour and benefactor',
and began a new era in the local calendar from this year. No details of his bene-
factions have survived. A prominent member of a local family, Cn. Cornelius
Pulcher, who had been procurator of Epirus at least ten years earlier, and had
evidently retired from imperial service since then, would soon take on the
appointment of iuridicus in Egypt. One may infer that this cultivated person
attracted Hadrian's attention at this time. Pulcher's forebears had already received
Roman citizenship under Augustus. He himself had served as Helladarch, chair-
man of the Council of the Achaians - an association of Peloponnesian cities,
rather than a provincial council of the normal type. There were, indeed, various
competing federal organisations in Greece. Hadrian was evidently in two minds
for a while as to which he should promote and foster. Pulcher had been a friend
of Plutarch, who dedicated to him his essay on How to Make Use of Ones Enemies.
He had been an appreciative reader, so he had told Plutarch, of the Precepts of
Statecraft.5
An inscription from Troezen, the next city to the south, honoured a local
benefactor, who had, among other services to his city, made its roads passable
for carriages in connection with 'the prayed-for visit of the greatest emperor'.
Everything speaks for this being Hadrian, especially as the little town of
Hermione, south of Troezen, erected a statue in honour of Sabina. It is plausible
to suppose that the imperial party went via Troezen and Hermione to Argos.
In the shrine of Hera, about 2 miles (3 km) from Mycenae, Pausanias saw 'an
altar depicting, in silver, the legendary marriage of Herakles and Hebe; and the
Emperor Hadrian has dedicated a peacock in gold and precious stones, because
peacocks are regarded as birds sacred to Hera.' Pausanias also noted that the
Heraeum still preserved a golden crown and purple dress which Nero had
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dedicated there on his famous visit in 67. Nero's interest in this part of Greece
was largely focused on the Games in which he competed (and won all the first
prizes). Hadrian did not neglect this aspect of Greek life, even if not personally
inclined to participate. Pausanias happens to mention 'the boys' race on the
riding-track at Nemea. The event had died out there, he adds, 'but the Emperor
Hadrian restored it to Argos for the Nemean winter Games.' These games seem
to have been held at Argos in later years on 30 December; it is reasonable to
infer that Hadrian watched them, indeed presided, on this day at the end of
124. It is hardly necessary to comment that Hadrian's revival of a horse-race for
boys admirably suits what is known about his tastes. What else may have been
on his agenda can only be guessed. He surely saw Mycenae and Tiryns. It seems
likely enough that a meeting of the Council of the Achaians, which had its seat
at Argos, was held to mark his visit, even if if was not the regular date for one.
Other fruits of his visit included a new aqueduct and the restoration of the
theatre. 6
From Argos it was a short stretch westwards into Arcadia, to Mantinea, where
three separate mentions in Pausanias' description of the city attest his presence.
Not the least welcome result of his visit was that he ordered the revival of the
city's original name. For ten generations, as Pausanias put it, Mantinea had been
called Antigonia, in fact since 222 BC, in honour of Antigonus II Doson, then
regent of Macedonia. Mantinea was the last resting-place of a famous Greek
statesman and general of the classical epoch, Epaminondas the Theban, the man
who first broke the power of Sparta and liberated the Messenians. Epaminondas,
often credited with being the greatest of panhellenic patriots, was buried where
he died, on the battlefield of 362 BC, four miles (6 km) along the road from
Mantinea to Pallantium.
A pillar stood over the tomb with a shield on it engraved with a serpent,
to indicate that Epaminondas belonged to the people that sprang from the
dragon's teeth. There are stone inscriptions on the monument, one of
them ancient with a text in the Boeotian dialect, the other dedicated by
the Emperor Hadrian, who composed it himself.
Honouring great figures of the past in this way was a characteristic feature of
Hadrian. Pausanias does not mention that Epaminondas was buried beside a
young man whose lover he had been, Caphisodorus, who had also fallen at
Mantinea. Plutarch had recalled this in his essay On Love. At Mantinea Hadrian
also ordered the building of a new temple of Poseidon the Lord of Horses,
the city's chief deity, by the edge of the mountain near the stadium. He 'set
inspectors to supervise the workmen to make sure that no one looked inside the
ancient shrine or moved a single stone from its ruins, ordering them to build
the new temple all round it.' 7
It must be a matter of conjecture whether there was already another, very
special reason for Hadrian to take an interest in Mantinea. It was supposed to
be the mother-city of Bithynium, the home of Antinous - in fact, Antinous
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came from a small community in the territory of Bithynium that was actually
called Mantinium. It is perfectly plausible that Hadrian had already met
Antinous the previous year during his tour of Bithynia and had taken him into
his entourage - and that he was Hadrian's constant companion from 123 until
his death in Egypt seven years later. Be this as it may, the Mantineans were
later to honour Antinous with particular fervour. His very name indeed recalled
a Mantinean legend, which must have been known at his Bithynian home.
Mantinea had originally been founded elsewhere, but, in response to the
command of an oracle, so it was related, Antinoe the daughter of King Cepheus
brought the people to a new site, guided by a dragon. She was revered as the
city's foundress.8
From Mantinea the route led south to Sparta, with a stop at Tegea on the way.
As had Epidaurus, Tegea revised its calendar to start a new era from the date of
his arrival, and an inscription calling him 'saviour and founder' presupposes that
he conferred benefits on the place. Hadrian's host at Sparta, probably in January
of 125, was almost certainly the head of the Euryclid family which had domi-
nated the place since the time of the Battle of Actium. By fighting on the winning
side - unlike most of the Greeks - and making a spirited attempt to catch the
fleeing Marcus Antonius, the first Eurycles, who claimed descent from the
Dioscuri, had won favour for himself and the Spartans. In spite of getting into
trouble with Augustus later, he was able to pass on his position of pre-eminence
at Sparta and in Greece generally to his son Laco. The current Euryclid, C. Julius
Eurycles Herculanus L. Vibullius Pius by his full names, 'thirty-sixth in descent
from the Dioscuri', was linked by family ties to Claudius Atticus and was a cousin
of Philopappus. Herculanus had become a Roman senator, first as quaestor of the
province Achaia, then as tribune of the plebs, praetor - and legate to a proconsul
of Baetica. He may well have only just returned from this year as assistant to the
proconsul of Hadrian's home province when the Emperor came to Sparta. One
may have leave to wonder which proconsul had invited this Spartan magnate to
be his legate. Could it have been Arrian? Hadrian's intellectual friend from
Nicomedia was to be consul a few years later, so that a proconsulship of Baetica
c. 124-5 would fit his known career. Furthermore, a poem in Greek has been
found at Corduba, dedicated to Artemis, goddess of the hunt, by a proconsul
called Arrianus. Why not suppose that this was the famous Arrian, who was after
all the author of a treatise on hunting? If Herculanus had already spent this year
in Baetica, he had surely visited Italica, and could have amused the Emperor with
gossip about his fellow-townsmen. Whether Hadrian found him congenial is
another matter. Plutarch had dedicated to Herculanus his essay How to Praise
Oneselfwithout Incurring Disapproval which may give some clue to his personality.
Still, he evidently had some close links with Hadrian's friend Pompeius Falco -
who had perhaps inherited the friendship from his father-in-law Sosius Senecio.
That might have enhanced Herculanus in Hadrian's eyes.9
Sparta benefited directly from Hadrian's interest. The island of Caudus off the
coast of Crete and the port of Corone on the Gulf of Messenia, both valuable
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sources of revenue, were presented to the city. A whole series of altars has been
found at Sparta honouring Hadrian as 'saviour, founder and benefactor'. It has
been suggested that a further practical benefaction was owed to Hadrian, a new
aqueduct. Sparta was still a name to conjure with, the Spartan 'myth' was still
potent. Above all, the ancient agoge, the training system for boys and young men
ascribed to Lycurgus, was still very much in force, a subject of admiration or at
least curiosity. Roman tourists were known to relish the rituals of Artemis
Orthia, at which the Spartan young had to endure hours of whipping. Claudius
Atticus, the great Athenian magnate, had himself spent some time at Sparta in
his youth and gone through this training. Hadrian seems to have referred
approvingly to 'the Laconian practices' in his speech to the Cyreneans two years
earlier.10
Hadrian's presence at two further places in the Peloponnese, Olympia and
Corinth, can be assigned tentatively to early 125. Admittedly, direct evidence for
a visit to Olympia is lacking. Nor is it clear which route he would have taken
from Sparta to Olympia, assuming that he did go there. He might simply have
headed north-west by the most direct route, via Megalopolis. In an inscription
from Lycosura, close to that city, the Megalopolitans honoured him as 'saviour
and benefactor of the world and founder of their own city'. This certainly
indicates some direct favour, even if not necessarily as a result of a visit. He
might equally well have gone west into Messenia, across Mount Taygetus, on to
Pylos, and then up the west coast. His presence at the little town of Abea, on
the Gulf of Messenia, where Laconia bordered Messenia, is, however, not proved
by the statue set up to him there 'in accordance with the decree of the Achaians',
giving him the title 'Boulaios', '(Lord - or God) of the Council'. It does perhaps
at least serve to reinforce the inference that he had attended a meeting of the
Achaian Council while at Argos. The Council also had statues to him set up at
Olympia itself. An inscription there records a sacrifice on his birthday, shortly
after a fragmentary reference to Zeus Apobaterios, 'Zeus who brings safely to
land'. Perhaps he had arrived at the nearest harbour, Pheia, on 26 January 125,
his forty-ninth birthday? But Pausanias has nothing to report of buildings or
benefactions by Hadrian here. Coins which were minted at Elis only during his
reign portray Phidias' famous statue of Olympian Zeus. This has been taken to
be a reminiscence of his visit, in particular to hint that Hadrian had paid for the
restoration of the vast image of the god, made of gold and ivory, now more than
five hundred years old. Olympian Zeus was at any rate very shortly to receive
very particular attention from Hadrian. It is hard to believe that he did not take
the chance of visiting Olympia itself.11
If Hadrian had approached Olympia from the south-east - or, for that matter,
if he was anywhere in the vicinity - he would surely have wanted to see Scillus,
where Xenophon had once lived in comfortable exile after returning with the
Ten Thousand. Pausanias reports that 'Scillus is stocked with wild boar and deer
for hunting', an ideal opportunity for Hadrian to indulge his passion. Here too
was the sanctuary and temple Xenophon had built to Ephesian Artemis and
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close by a a monument with a stone portrait which local people told Pausanias
was Xenophon's grave. Given Hadrians predilection for paying homage at the
tombs of famous men, this ought to have been a magnet for him. 1 2
From Olympia, then, it must be assumed that Hadrian set off eastwards across
the northern Peloponnese to Corinth. Philhellene Romans may sometimes have
felt uncomfortable in this city, which the Republican consul Mummius had
wiped off the map in 146 BC and had ceased to exist for a century until Caesar
rebuilt it as a Roman colony. Hadrian himself, as a fifteen-year-old briefly back at
Italica, must surely have been aware of the spoils from Corinth which Mummius
had presented to the town, then Rome's most westerly settlement. Since then it
had evidently been the residence of the Roman governor of Greece, the proconsul
of Achaia, a Latin island, along with the other colonia at Patras, in the middle of
Greece. But the Corinthians, even if still labelled by Pausanias as 'colonists sent
by Rome', were by now thoroughly Hellenised, as the philosopher or sophist
Favorinus told an audience there, not long after Hadrian's visit. Hadrian may
have seen the bronze statue of this extraordinary figure in the city library. At all
events, Pausanias registers Hadrian's benefactions here, an aqueduct and baths.
He adds, however, that the best known baths at Corinth - there were plenty
of them - had been donated by Eurycles the Spartan, made of the beautiful
speckled green Laconian marble. 13
At the latest, Hadrian was back in Athens in March of 125. At the great
festival of the Dionysia he presided as agonothetes, president of the festival, the
HA reports. Dio adds that 'he wore Athenian dress for the occasion and fulfilled
his duties brilliantly.' The cultural life of Athens gained Hadrian's attention
in other respects too. Four years before, the Epicureans had enlisted Plotina's
support to obtain a privilege, the right of the head of the school to name his
own successor, even a non-Roman citizen. In March 125, while at Athens,
Hadrian confirmed his previous reply, in writing, and his letter was again
engraved on marble. His letter is followed by a document which begins with the
name (in the dative) Heliodorus, who, whether or not he was the new head of
the school, was clearly an Epicurean. The HA happens to record Hadrian's
friendship with two men - and only two - who are labelled philosophers, one
being the famous Epictetus, whom he had probably met long before at
Nicopolis, on his way to be archon at Athens. Heliodorus is the other name.
The odds are that it was the Epicurean named on this inscription of the year
125. There is a further chance that the philosopher Heliodorus was none
other than C. Avidius Heliodorus, a Syrian from Cyrrhus, whom Hadrian
had very likely met ten years before in Syria. Heliodorus' Roman names point
to his having been made a citizen through the good offices of Avidius Nigrinus,
perhaps when Nigrinus held office as imperial commissioner in Greece.
However this may be, Avidius Heliodorus turns up a few years later as the holder
of an important office, in close proximity to Hadrian. 14
Hadrian may have had contact with another philosopher of Athens at
this time, Secundus, the 'silent philosopher', the teacher of Herodes. A legend
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A YEAR IN GREECE
developed of an encounter between Hadrian and Secundus, who defied the
imperial attempt to make him break his vow of silence and provided only written
answers to Hadrians questions. There were eventually versions in Arabic, Syriac,
Armenian and Ethiopic as well as Greek, all of them simply fiction, no doubt.
But there may be a few authentic details preserved. In the Arabic version the
'king's cousin Salan' is named. It has been plausibly proposed that this was none
other than Pedanius Fuscus Salinator, husband of Hadrians niece Julia Paulina.
Fuscus Salinator, who had been Hadrians colleague in the consulship in his first
full year as Emperor, must have been regarded as a likely heir to the throne. It is
likely enough that Fuscus and Julia were in the imperial party - if they were still
alive. Nothing is heard of Fuscus after the consulship he shared with Hadrian in
118. There is also a mention in the Secundus story of Hadrian losing patience
and ordering a military tribune to make the philosopher speak. The officer
sensibly pointed out that it would be easier to make lions or panthers talk than
a philosopher. A tribune commanding a detachment of the Praetorian Guard
- assuming that there was only one Prefect, Marcius Turbo, who remained at
Rome - or the commander of the Horse Guards, will have been part of Hadrian's
party. 15
The church historian Eusebius claims that two Christians, Quadratus and
Aristides, the latter an Athenian, addressed a defence of their faith to Hadrian
- his visit to Athens in 124-5 would certainly have been a good opportunity to
attempt to secure an audience or at least to deliver a written version to the
Emperor. The enquiry from Asia against the Christians two years earlier, to
which Hadrian had sent a reply to the proconsul Granianus, is a sign that the
Christians might have felt the need to take such a step. But it is perhaps more
likely that these men sent their Apologies to Hadrian's successor.16
This stay marked the opening of a colossal building programme. Nearly seven
hundred years earlier the Athenian tyrant Pisistratus had begun the construction
of a vast temple of Olympian Zeus in the south-east corner of the city, close to
the River Ilissus. After four hundred years the Seleucid king Antiochus IV
Epiphanes had taken the work a stage further, engaging a Roman architect
named Cossutius. But work had ceased on Antiochus' death in 164 BC, with the
marble shrine still only half built. In the time of Augustus, so Suetonius reports,
'all the client kings planned jointly to finish the temple of Olympian Jove at
Athens, begun in ancient times but never finished: they were to share the costs
and dedicate it to his [Augustus'] Genius. Whatever may be thought of the
intended rededication, the plan to exalt Athens in this way would certainly have
had Augustus' approval. But again, the project was not realised; and in any case
relations between the first Princeps and Athens went sour at the end of his reign.
It was to be many decades before the city regained imperial favour. Now
Hadrian launched the final stage of building, the erection of a vast enclosure
around the temple. 17
Another piece of public works was also begun at this time, the provision of a
new aqueduct leading water from Mount Parnes. It was the first time anyone
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A YEAR IN GREECE
Plate 21 Hadrian the restorer of Achaia

had brought water to the city from an external source since the days of
Pisistratus. The project was ambitious, involving tunnelling, with a great reser-
voir on Mount Lycabettus, and ending with a fountain-house in the highest
point of the Agora. It would be fifteen years before this was completed. There
were to be other major building initiatives undertaken by Hadrian at Athens,
and other significant privileges which he granted to the city. Quite when each
began and how long the work lasted is difficult to establish. But one of the
first to get under way was something wholly new, called variously 'the Stoa or
the 'Library of Hadrian. Just north of the Roman Agora, donated to Athens by
Caesar and Augustus, in appearance the new complex was to be reminiscent of
the Forum or temple of Peace at Rome. Undoubtedly Hadrian already had it in
mind to return, to inspect progress and to dedicate the finished buildings.
Equally, he will have wished to come to the Mysteries again, to be initiated into
the higher grade. But in the spring of 125 it was time to begin the journey back
to Rome, taking the opportunity to visit other places in central and western
Greece on his way. It was four years since he had left the capital. 18
The route taken was north-westwards, past Mount Cithaeron, into Boeotia.
At Thespiae, below Mount Helicon, the home of the Nine Muses, 'the god par-
ticularly worshipped has always been Eros', as Pausanias puts it. Here, on 'one
of the most fertile mountains in Greece', Hadrian went hunting and killed a
bear, as he had the previous year in Mysia. A few miles from Thespiae was found
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A YEAR IN GREECE
an inscription with eight lines of Greek verse which Hadrian had composed. He
had offered the bear's skin to Eros, calling him 'archer son of the sweet-tongued
Cyprian (Aphrodite), dwelling at Heliconian Thespiae by Narcissus' flowering
garden'. In return he asked the god to 'breathe grace soberly on him from
heavenly Aphrodite'. Aphrodite Urania, so Socrates is made by Xenophon in
his Symposium to expound it, was the patron deity of spiritual, as opposed to
physical, love - in the context, to be sure, of love between man and youth:
Hadrian and his Antinous, it might be thought, but this cannot be proved. 19
Thespiae was the setting of Plutarch's essay On Love. It is in the form of a
conversation between Plutarch's son Autobulus and his friend Flavianus, with
other friends, in the shrine of the Muses on Helicon, during the festival of the
Erotidia, held every fifth year. Autobulus tells his friend a story he had heard
from his father Plutarch about a dispute at a previous festival, centring round a
beautiful young man called Baccho. A wealthy widow called Ismenodora had
fallen in love with him, to the intense exasperation of Baccho's male admirers.
A friend from Tarsus, Protogenes, had been particularly vehement in his
attack on Ismenodora. Marriage might be a necessity, to produce children, 'but
genuine love has no connection with the women's quarters'. True love, he
insisted, is the strong passion for a young and talented spirit; only the love of
boys is the genuine kind. 'You will see it in the schools of philosophy or perhaps
in the gymnasia . . . searching for young men, whom it encourages with a clear
and noble cry to the pursuit of virtue.' Plutarch himself in due course weighs
in, not least to defend married love. Other things aside, Plutarch's essay is only
one of countless examples from Hellenic literature and art which treat homo-
sexual love, in particular that between an older man and a beautiful youth, as
entirely normal, indeed laudable and superior to the love between men and
women. Xenophon's Symposium, with Socrates' praise of heavenly Aphrodite, has
just been mentioned. Attitudes at Rome, even if Greek influences had had their
effect, were still very much more conservative. 20
Hadrian's philhellenism unquestionably embraced 'Greek love' too. In the
Hellenic half of his empire he must have felt freer. It remains quite uncertain
whether he already had Antinous with him. Even if the only possible occasion
for him to have visited Bithynium seems to be the year 124, the sources make
no explicit mention of Antinous being in his company until the visit to Egypt
in 130. All the same, given that an emperor travelled with a massive entourage,
military escort, court officials and ministers, palace slaves and freedmen,
Antinous may have been found a discreet place. One may compare a tomb-
stone from Rome, which commemorates a young man of seventeen called
L. Marius Vitalis. Accomplished in letters', he persuaded his parents that he
should learn artefic(ium) - what kind of art or skill is not specified - and 'left
the city in the praetorium of Hadrianus Augustus Caesar. The envious fates
snatched him from his art while he was studying.' Perhaps he had joined the
great team of artists and craftsmen which the Epitome claims Hadrian took
with him on his travels.21
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A YEAR IN GREECE
Another place in Boeotia that Hadrian may have visited was Lebadea, famous
for its oracle of Trophonius. At any rate, Trophonius seems later to have had
some special significance for the Emperor. Whether he actually consulted the
oracle himself may perhaps be doubted - this involved living for several days in
a building consecrated 'to Good Fortune and the Good Spirit', according to
Pausanias, and after a series of rituals ending up in a kiln-like structure, entered
by a light, narrow ladder. 'When a man comes up from Trophonius', Pausanias
recorded, 'he is still possessed with terror and hardly knows himself - he did
not write from hearsay, but from personal experience. This might have been too
much for an emperor. 22
At Boeotian Coronea Hadrian's presence left traces of a more prosaic and
practical kind. A series of his letters concern the construction of dykes to control
the rivers Cephisus and Hercyne at their confluence before they emptied into
Lake Copais. 'Construction will begin as soon as possible', he told the archons,
council and demos of the Coroneans in a letter from the year 125, to prevent the
rivers flooding most of the arable land. He would supply the funds which the
experts - perhaps members of his team of specialists - had told him were
required, 65,000 denarii. A second, very fragmentary letter from the same year
refers to the supply of'wine for the soldiers [travelling] with me'. The work was
to take a long time, and would include another river, the Phalarus. Further
letters followed over the next ten years, also involving disputes between Coronea
and its neighbours Thisbe and Orchomenus. 2 3
Personal inspection of the flooding problems may have taken Hadrian to the
north side of Lake Copais. At any rate, Pausanias has two items which suggest
his presence north of the lake. At little Abae in Phocis, where the temples that
Xerxes' soldiers had burned six hundred years before had been left in their
ruined state, there was still one great shrine, and 'beside it a smaller one to
Apollo, built by the Emperor Hadrian'. At nearby Hyampolis, also destroyed
by Xerxes' men and later again by Philip II of Macedon, Hadrian 'built a
colonnade' named after himself, a Stoa Hadriane. 24
Perhaps the most important stage of his journey in 125 now lay before
him: Delphi. If he came from Abae he would pass below Mount Parnassus. He
had already written 'to the city of the Delphians' earlier in the year, announcing
his decision on how many delegates each member-state in the ancient
Amphictyonic Council should have. Augustus had weighted the voting-rights
heavily in favour of his new city of Nicopolis near Actium, and Nero had made
further changes. Now, Hadrian's letter reveals, a commission of enquiry had
recommended to the Senate at Rome that the membership should be reconsti-
tuted. He refers to the proposal that the number of members should be increased
and a new balance be established. In particular, excess votes hitherto held by the
Thessalians 'should be transferred to the Athenians, Lacedaemonians and other
cities, so that the Council (synedrion) should be a common Council of all the
Hellenes.' O n other matters, concerning both expenses for strangers (visitors)
and a dispute between the Thessalians and Delphi, 'I shall decide at Delphi.'
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A YEAR IN GREECE
Further, he had appointed one 'Claudius Timocrates to collect and send to me all
the decrees of the Amphictyons which are in conflict with one another or with
the common [i.e. Roman] laws, so that an investigation may be made.' The stress
on making the Amphictyons 'a common Council of all the Hellenes' suggests
that at this stage he planned to make Delphi the main Panhellenic centre, from
which to revive the national self-consciousness of the Greeks. 25
Plutarch, whom he had certainly known and admired, must have been dead
by now, though he had lived to see Hadrian Emperor and had been honoured
by him with an official title. Several of Plutarch's writings were devoted to
Delphi and its oracle and he himself had taken a very active and prominent role
in the Amphictyonic Council and as one of the two permanent priests of Apollo.
He had been executive officer of the Amphictyons when they voted to honour
Hadrian with a statue on his accession. In one of his essays or dialogues on
Delphi, he accepted that the oracle now had more trivial questions to answer
than in the great days of old, hence the answers were often in prose. 'I am
perfectly happy with the settled conditions which now prevail, I welcome them',
says one of the speakers in The Oracles at Delphi, 'and the questions put to the
oracle merely reflect the circumstances: profound peace and tranquillity.'
Although Plutarch had probably written the dialogue nearly twenty years
earlier, Hadrian, if he read the work again before his visit, may have taken some
satisfaction from these words. He no doubt felt obliged to pose a question to
the priestess himself: 'Where was Homer born and who were his parents?'
(Perhaps his tour of the Ionian cities of Asia the previous summer had irritated
him with their competing claims to be Homer's birthplace.) The priestess made
a special effort for him and produced four lines of hexameter verse: Homer was
born at Ithaca, son of Telemachus and Polycaste.26
Pausanias has nothing to report of buildings erected by Hadrian at Delphi, but
an inscription there of & frumentarius from the legion I Italica shows that soldiers
had been left there to supervise 'the works undertaken by the Lord Caesar
Traianus Hadrianus Sebastus'. Hadrian's active interest in the great religious
centre continued for some time. He was to write to Delphi from Tibur later in
the year and held office there too, albeit in absentia. He was honoured at Delphi
by 'the Hellenes who meet at Plataea, who still celebrated their deliverance from
the Persians in 479 BC by sacrificing regularly to Zeus the Liberator. They called
him 'Emperor Hadrian the Saviour who has healed and nourished his own
Hellas'. As for the Delphians, they voted to declare the days of Hadrian's visit
religious holidays for the future. 27
There is good evidence that Hadrian was at some time much further north,
in the Vale of Tempe and in Macedonia, but this could have been some years
later. This time his route would take him westwards, almost certainly by sea,
from the Corinthian Gulf and past Cephallenia and Ithaca to Nicopolis in
Epirus. He had surely been there before, on his way to be archon at Athens. It
was probably then that he had first met Epictetus. If the old man was still alive,
Hadrian would have wished to see him again. As likely as not, Hadrian would
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A YEAR IN GREECE
only have been able to pay his respects at Epictetus' tomb. Then it was time to
move on, with the final Greek stage at the journey taking him up the coast to
the port of Dyrrhachium. Among the party, inter amicos, was probably his
quaestor, the Athenian Herodes Atticus. 28
188
16
PATER PATRIAE
An emperor's letter to the city of Heraclea Lyncestis in Macedonia, written

at Dyrrachium (Diirres in Albania) on 20 May of an unknown year, has been
plausibly attributed to Hadrian and taken to indicate that he was on his way
back to Italy at this time in 125. The subject of the letter was the cost of road-
building and the writer, assumed to be an emperor, tells the Lyncestae that
'I have set forth in a general edict how the roads are to be paved.' They are
given precise instructions on the apportionment of costs. The 'general edict' had
no doubt prompted an enquiry. For the Lyncestae, through whose territory
the great military trunk-road the Via Egnatia ran, the matter was serious.
Hadrian could well have issued such an edict during his stay in Greece. His
personal attention to the Megara-Corinth road was registered by Pausanias, and
milestones from northern Greece of 124 and 125 may reflect a more general
road-building programme. 1
If Hadrian was really at Dyrrachium in late May 125, the normal thing would
have been to embark from there for Brundisium (Brindisi). But, according to
the HA, he sailed to Sicily. All that is reported of the visit is that he climbed
Mount Etna, to see the sunrise, 'said to be like a rainbow'. The later coins call
him the restitutor Siciliae, as well as registering his adventus on the island, but
there are no clear traces of any measures he took there. The adventus coins show
Hadrian not in a toga but in a modified military dress. Sicilia holds two corn-
ears in her hand and the triskelis, the badge of the three-cornered island, appears
behind her head. Given the direction that he came from, he presumably landed
at Syracuse, which no tourist with an interest in history, private or imperial,
would have missed. It may be guessed that he stayed at Centuripae, on the
south-west side of Etna, with his friend Pompeius Falco, whose family came
from there. In any case, it was not to be his only stay on the island. Another old
friend whom Hadrian probably met now was the procurator of Sicily, M. Vettius
Latro. Nearly twenty years earlier Latro had been tribune in II Adiutrix, when
Hadrian, as governor of Pannonia Inferior, was the legion's commander. Since
then he had had a very slow career. He was now promoted, to be procurator-
governor of the Cottian Alps. 2
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PA TER PA TRIAE
Plate 22 Hadrian the restorer of Italy

{BMCIII Hadrian no. 1825)
The best-known work in Latin literature devoted to Sicily was Cicero's

denunciation of the governor Verres, never delivered in full, but written up at
enormous length. Hadrians distaste for Cicero is well-attested - he preferred the
Elder Cato and the simpler style of the Middle Republic to Cicero's elaborate
rhetoric. But he had probably had to read the Orationes Verrinae in his youth.
It is a nice coincidence that at about the time of this visit to Sicily, or shortly
before, a man called Verres held the consulship. Nothing else is known about
him, and there is no guarantee that he was a descendant of the delinquent
propraetor from the years 7 3 - 1 BC - he might, indeed, have been a Sicilian,
whose ancestor had obtained the citizenship (no doubt in return for hard cash)
through the mediation of the notorious governor. However this may be, one
might construe the promotion of a Verres as a little joke at the expense of
Cicero's memory. 3
Hadrian's route from southern Italy back to Rome can only be guessed. He
might have gone by sea from Sicily to Puteoli or Ostia. It seems unlikely that he
would have crossed the Straits of Messina to go overland through Bruttium
(Calabria) and all the way along the west coast. Perhaps he sailed to Tarentum,
the ancient Spartan colony that had once dominated the Ionian Sea, to join the
Via Appia, and so northwards into Samnium. At all events he would not have used
the new Via Traiana, still under construction when Hadrian was last in these parts,
in 112, with his friend Falco in charge. Whichever way he went, each city that he
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PATER PATRIAE
entered would put on a ceremony of greeting and petitions would be presented.
Some traces of his activity in the region may go back to this journey, for example
his appointment of a curator of public works at Venusia. At Aeclanum he had
something more to offer. A citizen of this town, C. Eggius Ambibulus, was in high
favour and was to be consul ordinarius the following year. It was probably as a
favour to Ambibulus that Hadrian awarded the town the rank of colonia. Two
years before Hadrian had contributed jointly with the local landowners to
improve the Via Appia between Aeclanum and Beneventum.
There was something new and out of the ordinary to see at Beneventum. In
114 the Senate had voted the erection of a triumphal arch in the city in Trajan's
honour. Although the inscription still bore the original date, as if Trajan had still
been alive when the monument was erected, the prominence of Hadrian in at
least one scene makes it clear that the design had been carefully modified. The
Arch celebrates Trajan as the conqueror of Dacia and the restorer of Italy through
the alimenta system. Hadrian is depicted close to Trajan, the only figure on the
same scale, in other words as the chosen heir. This hardly represented his real
position in 114, which had still been ambiguous.
From Beneventum, rather than going via the Via Appia to the Bay of Naples,
which he had visited in 119, he could have proceeded through the Samnite
country of the central Apennines. A stop at Saepinum, home of the influential
Neratii family, is likely enough. Hadrian's freedman Phlegon referred in his
Olympiads to an otherwise unknown place called 'Tervetia, which the Byzantine
geographer Stephanus labels as 'in Sicily'. It may be that Phlegon, the last part
of whose work reflected Hadrian's itinerary, really referred to Terventum in
northern Samnium. If this is the case, the return journey to Rome followed a
roundabout route, but it would mean he could have inspected a part of Italy he
is not otherwise known to have visited. He could then have entered Rome from
the east, and called on the way at Tibur. 4
Public prayers for his safe return had been undertaken: coins were struck
showing the Genius of the Roman People and the Genius of the Senate jointly
sacrificing, with the legend v(ota) s(uscepta) pro red(itu). It may be assumed that
his entry to the city was festive. He was probably glad to be back this time, if
for no other reason than because he would be able to inspect the progress of the
numerous and massive building projects that had been under way. It was to be
several more years before the great new temple of Roma and Venus would
be finished. But the rebuilding of the Pantheon was now complete in all its
magnificence. Other works of renewal in this part of Rome would soon be
concluded. There was also a massive new temple, of 'the Deified Trajan and
Plotina. The HA singles out 'the temple of his father, Trajan as 'the only one of
the innumerable works he built on which he inscribed his own name'. From what
survives of the text, it is clear that Hadrian added Plotina's name and dedicated
the temple parentibus sui[s]. The structure was certainly magnificent, occupying
a prominent place between Trajan's Column and the Via Lata, and rising to a
height of some fifty Roman feet. Apart from inspection of the building work,
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PATER PATRIAE
Hadrian may have carried out a ceremony at another temple, that of Janus,
closing the Gates of War as a sign that the world was now at peace. The act is
nowhere directly attested, but the god duly appears on the imperial coinage at
about this time. 5
It was not only in the city itself that Hadrian had been building. His country
retreat at Tibur was being turned into a great palace. N o later than the second
half of August or in early September Hadrian was there, for a letter of his to the
Amphictyons and Delphi was written at this time 'from his house at Tibur'.
Tibur had already been favoured by the elite during the late Republic. Its
situation in the Sabine Hills less than 20 miles from the city offered fresh air,
especially at times of year when Rome was hot and sultry. There were groves and
orchards, the cascading River Anio, the sulphurous hot springs in the plain
below. Hadrian's family had probably had a country seat there for several
generations. What has been aptly called a 'nest of Spanish notables' was already
ensconced under the Flavians. Statius devoted over one hundred hexameters
(even if the poem only took him a day to compose) to the sumptuous Villa
Tiburtina of Manilius Vopiscus, for whom Spanish origin can be inferred. It was
a cool retreat, built on both sides of the Anio, adorned with works of art, with
a wooded park. The present incumbent was the son or grandson of Statius'
patron. Another villa-owning family was the Minicii Natales from Barcino
(Barcelona). The elder Natalis, consul in 106, had governed Pannonia Superior
in Trajan's last years, the younger had been Hadrian's quaestor in 121 - but had
been allowed to join his father, then proconsul, in Africa. Tibur's decurions
had subscribed to erect a statue to the elder Natalis after his return from Africa:
he was curator of the great temple of Hercules in the town and had consented
to hold the office of quinquennalis (the local government equivalent of censor)
there. Whether Hadrian was close to the Minicii or Manilii is unknown. But
another Spaniard with a seat at Tibur, Aemilius Papus, from Siarum in Baetica,
is named by the HA as one of Hadrian's three particular friends at the time of
the Parthian war. A tombstone near Tibur was set up by Papus and his wife
Cutia Prisca, to commemorate one of their sons, who died at the start of his
senatorial career. Nothing is known about Papus' own career, but another son
was already well launched and would soon command a legion in Britain. 6
The imperial villa, strangely enough, was not on the heights, where the air
was best, but on the flatter land below the town. Perhaps Hadrian wanted more
space than the ostensibly more favoured position above would have permitted.
The original villa in the north-east quarter of the site, perhaps inherited from
his father, had already been extended: the new structures included a great court-
yard and a throne-room, two sets of baths, a theatre and stadium. Further work
was now begun, probably under the imperial architect's own direction. It is to
this last phase of the palace's development that the HA refers:
He completed the building of his Tiburtine villa in wonderful fashion, in

such a way that he inscribed the most famous names of provinces and
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places there, and called them, for example, the Lyceum, the Academy,
Canopus, Poecile and Tempe. So that he might omit nothing, he even
made a Hades.
The Canopus perhaps got its name later - Hadrian did not go to Egypt until
130 - but in any case a structure of this nature was a conventional feature for
a great country-house. The long portico in the southern part of the palace,
surrounding a pool, with a half-domed apsidal building at one end, corresponds
in its dimensions to the Euripus of Alexandria's Canopus. As for the other
names, the emphasis is on Greece, particularly Athens. 7
It was not only wealthy senators who had a place at Tibur. The elderly satirist
Juvenal had a little farm there. Whether he was able to attract Hadrian's
attention - and patronage - is another matter. But he seems to have tried. His
seventh Satire begins with a direct reference to the Emperor: 'The only hope
for the arts rests with Caesar . . . he alone notices the wretched Muses in these
times . . . Go to it, lads: the Emperor is surveying you and urging you on, his
generosity is seeking a fitting outlet.' The days of the great patrons like Maecenas
were over. As for you writers of history, is your labour more profitable? . . .
Notching up the thousandth page and a hefty bill for papyrus: this is what the
vast theme demands and the rules of your profession - but where is the profit?'
It is difficult not to suspect a reference to Cornelius Tacitus, labouring at his
Annales. Apart from Florus, whose exchange of doggerel with Hadrian was cited
by the HA, only one other poet is attested as Hadrian's friend. Apuleius recalls
how the Emperor 'honoured the tomb of his friend the poet Voconius with a
line to this effect: "Wanton thou wast in thy verse, but chaste in soul."' This
might be Martial's friend Voconius Victor, whose beautiful boy favourite
Thestylus was the subject of one of Martial's Epigrams. Another poem, from the
time of Nerva, expresses malicious amusement that Victor was to marry and
anticipates that he will have to change his sexual practices - 'your nurse and your
mother will forbid' what Victor had been used to 'and will tell you: "This is your
wife, not a boy!"' Martial advised Victor to get some training with a professional
in the Subura: '"She will make you a man; a virgin is not a good teacher.'" 8
The literary salons of the time were more concerned with debating pedantic
niceties of linguistic usage in the classics than with current poetry or prose. It
was probably during these years that Hadrian had a famous exchange, reported
by the HA, with the sophist Favorinus of Arelate (Aries). This remarkable figure,
although a Gaul by birth, was completely Hellenised, and was regarded as one
of the leading Greek intellectuals among the practitioners of what was later
called the 'Second Sophistic'. Described as a hermaphrodite, with no beard and
a high-pitched voice, 'he was nonetheless so ardent in love that he was actually
prosecuted for adultery by a man of consular rank', Philostratus, the biographer
of the sophists, records. He quotes Favorinus' own remark, 'in the ambiguous
style of an oracle, that there were in the story of his life these three paradoxes:
though a Gaul, he lived as a Hellene; though a eunuch, he had been on trial
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for adultery; though he had quarrelled with an emperor, he was still alive.'
Philostratus does not really report a quarrel as such. Instead, he tells how
Favorinus tried to secure immunity, on the grounds that he was a philosopher,
from the requirement to serve as high-priest of the imperial cult in his native
Gaul. Before the claim was heard, Hadrian had indicated that he would reject
it. Philosophers did indeed enjoy exemption from such expensive public duties
- but Hadrian did not regard him as a philosopher. When Favorinus realised
this, he informed the Emperor that his teacher Dio (of Prusa) had appeared to
him in a dream and told him that it was his duty to undertake the priesthood.
The people of Athens apparently reacted to the news of Favorinus' fall from
favour by demolishing the bronze statue of the sophist, 'as though he were the
Emperor's bitterest enemy.' 9
Cassius Dio has a briefer version of the same story, to illustrate Hadrian's
'jealousy of all who excelled in any respect', and actually states that the Emperor
'overthrew Favorinus'. But he goes on to say that he spared him, and Philostratus
too stresses that 'though Favorinus fell out with the Emperor, he suffered no
harm.' Hadrian 'used to lighten the responsibilities of empire by turning his
mind to philosophers and sophists', he comments, and his treatment of
Favorinus was merely 'for his own diversion. Curiously enough, Favorinus wrote
On Exile. A papyrus copy of this work, first published in 1931, suggests that
Favorinus actually was banished and was writing from exile on the island of
Chios. However this may be, the affair of the immunity claim can hardly
be the dispute, which neither Philostratus nor Dio properly explain. Perhaps
the adultery charge was the reason - after all, Favorinus had had an affair with the
wife of an ex-consul, who may have pressed Hadrian to punish the delinquent.
But it may be suspected that it involved the taking of sides between Polemo, a
bitter rival of Favorinus, and Herodes Atticus, his friend, and perhaps came later
in the reign. 10
As for the exchange reported in the HA, this too hardly seems enough to
result in Favorinus' exile. There was an argument about the use of words, of the
kind lovingly retailed by Aulus Gellius in his Attic Nights a few decades later -
Favorinus featuring prominently in these literary recollections, along with the
orator Fronto. The HA biographer introduces the story as an illustration of a
general statement about Hadrian.
Although he expressed himself with great facility in both prose and verse
and was very expert in all the arts, his attitude to the professors who taught
them was to mock, despise and humiliate. He often competed with these
professors and philosophers by publishing books and poems turn and turn
about.
Then comes the anecdote.
In the case of Favorinus, when an expression he had used had on one

occasion been criticised by Hadrian, and he had given way, his friends
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reproached him: he should not have conceded to Hadrian over a word
that reputable authors had used. Favorinus' reply provoked laughter: 'Your
advice is misplaced, my dears. You must allow me to consider him to be
more learned - he is the Lord of Thirty Legions.' 11
The sally no doubt got back to Hadrian, who might have resented being
laughed at. But it is hard to believe that his response was to send Favorinus into
exile. Their relations will have to remain an enigma - the HA, indeed, on the
following page, stresses that,
albeit he was very ready to criticise musicians, tragic and comic actors,
grammarians, rhetoricians and lawyers, yet he both honoured and
enriched all the professors, even if he did always torment them by his
questions. And although he was responsible for many leaving his presence
in distress, he used to say that he took it badly when he saw anyone upset.
The biographer goes on to say that 'he was on close terms with the philosophers
Epictetus and Heliodorus and, without mentioning names, with grammarians,
rhetoricians, musicians, geometricians, painters and astrologers, but above all, as
many assert, with Favorinus.' 12
A similar anecdote is preserved in a late Roman work on grammarians, by
Charisius, who cites the Emperor himself as author of Sermones on grammatical
questions in two books. Hadrian had a dispute with Terentius Scaurus - the
finest grammarian of the age, according to Gellius, and also, so the HA reports
in a later vita, Hadrian's own old teacher. In one debate he rebutted Scaurus on
a matter of scansion by sending for a second opinion, in another he refuted
Scaurus on a question of Latin usage - of the word obiter - by quoting various
authorities, including the mime-writer Laberius and other early authors, and
finally a letter of Augustus in which the first Princeps had reproved Tiberius for
avoiding the word. Of course, Hadrian added, Augustus was only a layman.
As it happens, Scaurus is portrayed by Gellius precisely discussing a word
coined by the poet Laberius. Lengthy and sometimes heated discussions on the
right use of words take up much of the Attic Nights. The orator Fronto could
discourse at length on the correct meaning of praeter propter. Favorinus, among
a number of other appearances in the work, is shown sharply rebuking a young
man for using obsolete words. In another vignette, he gracefully concedes to
Fronto over the question of whether Greek or Latin had more words to describe
colour. The exchange reported by the HA can readily be grasped in this context.
As for Favorinus' exile - the real reason was perhaps the adultery charge,
especially if the cuckolded senator had influence. 13
The year 126 opened with the consulship of Annius Verus and Eggius
Ambibulus. Verus was holding office for the third time, equalling the Emperor's
score. Such an honour was rare indeed and must underline the high favour this
man enjoyed. Hadrian's brother-in-law Servianus, whose first consulship had
been held in 90 and who had gained a second from Trajan in 102, may have
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hoped for a third. He seemed to have recognised that Verus had outdone him
by composing a little poem: he had thought himself the leading player in 'the
glass ball game', apparently a joking reference to the game of politics - but
'I have been beaten by the thrice consul Verus, my patron, not just once
but often.' Verus had now given up the prefecture of Rome, which he had
probably held since 117, being succeeded by Lollius Paullinus, a scion of
the Julio-Claudian aristocracy. Hadrian's closeness to the Annii Veri is also
illustrated by the attention he paid to Verus' grandson. The young Marcus'
father, also a M. Annius Verus, had died and the boy had been adopted by his
grandfather. Hadrian, 'under whose close supervision he was brought up', the
HA biography of Marcus reports, called him Verissimus, 'truest', after his father's
death. 14
A cause for celebration in 126 was the completion of a major building project,
the restoration of the temple of the Deified Vespasian and Titus. The Fasti
Ostienses register the holding of games by Hadrian in the Circus to mark the
dedication: the fragmentary text concludes with the figure MDCCCXXXV,
evidently referring to 1,835 pairs of gladiators. The same source is sadly limited,
for Hadrian, to the years 126-8, with one further piece registering rather less
lavish games in April and May of an uncertain year. But it happens to show that
Hadrian was holding the office of duumvir 2X Ostia in 126, for the second time.
It would not necessarily mean that he carried out the duties in person, although
he might well have put in one or two appearances, for Ostia also was being
restored and embellished on his initiative at this time, and land was assigned to
settlers there, perhaps on an imperial estate. Other places in the vicinity of Rome
also benefited from his attention. In Latium, Lavinium and Lanuvium received
land-assigments and Hadrian paid for rebuilding at Gabii, long proverbial as a
run-down little town. All three were part of Rome's earliest, legendary history.
So too, as a deadly rival, was Veii, the Etruscan city across the Tiber, and here
as well Hadrian was active. His favour to Etruria in general was shown by his
accepting the office of 'praetor of the fifteen cities' of the old Etruscan league.
Further to the south, Formiae was granted the status of colonia and he appointed
a curator for Tarracina. 15
Hadrian found time 126 for another activity: he agreed to be the magister of
the Arval Brethren. O n his first return to Rome, in summer 118, he had
participated in their rituals on the very day he entered the city, for he had duly
been co-opted to membership of this as of all the priestly colleges. Now he
took his turn to preside, which would involve ceremonies at the grove of the
Dea Dia on 19 May, and inviting the college to the palace, to sacrifice and to
dine. In his capacity as magister he also paid for the erection of some building,
perhaps a shrine, for the Brethren - in Rome itself, rather than at the goddess'
sacred grove on the Tiber bank between Rome and Ostia, where the Arvals
principally foregathered. The fragmentary inscription celebrates his action as
a 'record of unusual munificence at Rome' {[ut documejntum esset Romae
inso[litae munificentiae}).16
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That he was now back in Italy and conferring benefits on communities there
did not of course mean that he could not devote attention to the rest of the
empire, in particular to the Greeks. He had occasion in the course of 126 to
write a letter to the Koinon (Council) of the Achaians. Copies have been found
at both Athens and Olympia. While approving the good will shown by their
vote of further honours for him, Hadrian clearly wished them to show restraint.
Early in 127 an ambassador arrived from Stratonicea in Lydia, which Hadrian
had been to three years before. It was one of the now numerous cities that were
now called Hadrianopolis, and the archons, council and people are duly so
addressed. They received, indeed, no fewer than three separate missives. Writing
from Rome on 11 February, Hadrian confirmed that he had read the decree
thanking the ambassador, Claudius Candidus Julian us. Another letter, also
from Rome, but undated, added that Hadrian had noted the city's expression of
gratitude to the proconsul Avidius Quietus for benefits conferred during his
year of office (125-6). Finally, on 1 March, again from Rome, Hadrian dealt
with the request: he approved the city's claim to exact taxes in the rural hinter-
land and its wish to sell or repair a house belonging to an absentee landlord: you
seem to be requesting what is only just and necessary for a newly established
city.' Hadrian had probably already established a special secretariat for his
correspondence with the Greeks. Valerius Eudaemon, the sharp-witted friend
who had been at his side in August 117 and had then held high rank at
Alexandria in Egypt, followed by the directorship of the imperial libraries at
Rome, held as his next appointment the post of ab epistulis Graecis.17
That Hadrian wrote to the Stratoniceans from Rome suggests that he spent
winters in the capital, presumably in the Domitianic palace. At any rate, from
about 126 rebuilding was under way there too: the aim seems to have been to
render the forbidding pile more comfortable in winter - Nerva and Trajan had
evidently avoided living there. In the interior, a hypocaust system was installed
in the 'Banqueting Hall of Jupiter'. Changes to the exterior on the Forum side
were apparently intended to make the palace seem closer to the people.
Modifications were also in hand at the other principal imperial residence, the
palace in the Horti Sallustiani, towards the north-eastern edge of Rome.
'Sallust's Park', once the property of the historian's grand-nephew, had passed
into imperial hands on his death and had been favoured by both Vespasian and
Nerva. 18
Within less than two years after his return from Greece, Hadrian was restless
again. It was too soon to launch another tour of the provinces, but, as a precious
fragment of the Fasti Ostienses reveals, Hadrian left Rome on 3 March 127 for
Italiam circum[ ]. The missing part of the second word must be [padanam\, in
other words the valley of the River Padus (Po). He was to be away for five
months. It may be idle to try to guess his itinerary on this journey. But stray
hints can be gathered from inscriptions about places he is likely to have visited.
Trebula Mutuesca, some 45 miles (72 km) north-east of Rome, on the Via
Salaria, was the home of Laberia Crispina, wife of his friend Bruttius Praesens,
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with whom he would surely have been glad to stay. The city was assigned a
curator by Hadrian later in the reign. Aequicoli, east of Trebula, thanked the
Emperor two years later for restoring some of its public buildings, and he is also
known to have made yet another effort, this time successful, at draining the
Lacus Fucinus, a project begun by Claudius and revived by Trajan. That
Hadrian may have travelled by the Salaria, rather than the Flaminia, is plausible
enough for another reason. This would have given him the chance to make a
detour to Hadria in Picenum, the city near the Adriatic coast from which the
Aelii of Italica claimed to derive. The HA reports that this was one of the places
where he held a local magistracy. It would have been in character for him to go
there. Further north along this coast Hadrian's munificence is credited, precisely
in the year 127, with restoring the temple of the ancient Picentine earth-goddess
Cupra close to the city which bore her name, Cupra Maritima. 19
Hadrians restoration of an aqueduct at Cingulum in northern Picenum is not
of itself proof that he was there. But it so happens that Maenius Agrippa, an
equestrian officer who had been with Hadrian in Britain in 122, a prominent
native of this town, proudly claims on an inscription to have been host to the
Emperor. There might just have been time for Agrippa to have returned from
his four-year tour of duty on the Solway Firth for some home leave, before
proceeding to his third militia as prefect of cavalry in Moesia Inferior - he could
at any rate easily have been back at Cingulum by the summer of 127.
Alternatively, Hadrian could have stayed with him on his return journey. There
are two other signs of Hadrianic activity in Picenum. He may have paid for the
restoration of the theatre at Firmum; and he appointed a curator for the port of
Ancona. 20
There are a few places in the region of the Po itself, the principal object of his
tour, where he would have had a reason for a visit. Faventia (Faenza) on the Via
Aemilia is difficult to assess. It was the home of Avidius Nigrinus, the man put
to death for alleged conspiracy nine years before. Still, Hadrian had just referred
with approval, in one of his letters to the Stratoniceans, to Nigrinus' cousin
Quietus. A letter of Hadrian to Quietus himself is also preserved at Aezani in
Phrygia, in the gigantic temple of Zeus, with other documents regulating the
temple lands. Quietus had published the 'sacred decision' with a respectful
reference to 'the greatest Emperors concern', and how 'he combined justice with
philanthropy, in accordance with his care in decision-making'. A few years later
Hadrian was to show favour of the most pronounced kind possible to Nigrinus'
stepson and son-in-law Ceionius Commodus, by now in the early stages of his
senatorial career. Perhaps he was able to bury the hatchet with the Avidii in 127.
Well to the north of Faventia, north-west of Patavium (Padua), lay Vicetia
(Vicenza), the home of his beloved mother-in-law Matidia. This connection
might also have been grounds for a visit. At the western and eastern extremes of
the vast plain between Alps and Po were two other places in which one might
suggest an interest on his part. C o m u m (Como) was given a curator, a man
named Clodius Sura, who had been an equestrian officer in a legion once under
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Hadrian's command, II Adiutrix. Hadrian might have remembered him. A
family from Aquileia, the Caesernii, certainly won high favour: two young
brothers, both senators, were shortly to accompany the Emperor on the next
provincial tours, and an older kinsman is found serving as an officer in the
Guard, also in Hadrians company overseas. Another man from Aquileia,
Publicius Marcellus, consul in 120, had already governed Germania Superior
and would soon go on to another important command, Syria. Not far from
Aquileia lay Concordia, where Hadrians niece and her husband Pedanius Fuscus
seem to have had property. A visit there might also have been appropriate
- whether or not the pair was still alive.21
Whatever the details, the tour was over by the high summer: on 1 August,
the Fasti Ostienses register the Emperor's return to Rome. It was just in time for
a further celebration: the tenth anniversary of his accession fell on 11 August.
As it happens, the same inscription indicates that it was not until 19 October
that 'decennial votive games' were held to mark the occasion. They lasted for ten
days and included thirty pyrrhicae, military dances, in the Circus Maximus. The
HA mentions that such displays were put on 'frequently' by Hadrian. It could
be that he was seriously ill at this time. So, at least, it has been inferred from the
especial emphasis, in the coinage of the years 127-9, on the imperial health,
salus Augusti. The Epitome de Caesaribus claims that Hadrian 'had long suffered'
from the condition to which he was to succumb in 138. But the suspicion arises
that Hadrian retreated rapidly to Tibur, rather than spend August in the swelter-
ing heat of Rome. O n the other hand, he may simply have needed to recover
from an accident: the HA records that once 'while hunting he fractured his
collar-bone and a rib', but mentions neither the date nor the place. It could have
been 127 in Italy.22
The most important result of the Italian tour was probably announced in the
autumn or winter of 127, a major change in the government of the country. Italy
was to be divided into four regions, each under an imperial legate of consular
rank. Italia Transpadana was one of these districts, another included Etruria. No
doubt Rome and a wide circumference around the capital were exempted. The
HA refers briefly to the measure in three separate places, Appian mentions it once
in passing. A single inscription happens to register one of the men who held the
office, L. Vitrasius Flamininus, who had been consul in 122, and then, at earliest
in 124, had been curator of the Tiber. Flamininus is described as leg. pr. pr.
of Italia Transpadana and of the province of Moesia Superior. In other words, a
district of Italy was being treated as a province. Hadrian presumably discussed the
plan with his consilium (Privy Council) before implementing it, and secured
agreement. But the move was not popular, and the system was abolished by his
successor, Antoninus - who was himself one of the new office-holders. The HA
reports, in the biography of Antoninus, that 'he was chosen by Hadrian as one of
the four consulars to whom Italy was entrusted, to govern that part of Italy in
which he owned the most property.' In the biography of Hadrian, there is only a
laconic sentence: 'He established four consulars as indices throughout Italy'
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Marcus Aurelius later revived the system, 'following Hadrians example, accord-
ing to which he had instructed consulars to administer justice'. But the revived
version was lower-key: the Marcan officials were only ex-praetors with the title
iuridicus, and their duties were confined to the courts. The HAs use of the term
indices in the biography of Hadrian has given the mistaken impression that the
four consular office-holders were likewise merely assize judges. But indices was
used here in its later sense, 'governor'. 23
Appian's reference to the Hadrianic system is an aside in his account of the
Italian revolt of 91 BC: 'It appears that there were praetors with consular power
at that time governing the various parts of Italy; the Emperor Hadrian revived
the custom a long time afterwards, but it did not long survive him.' This makes
one wonder if Hadrian had cited ancient precedent to justify his reform. From
the viewpoint of the Senate, it was an infringement of their right to supervise
Italy. This had been expressed in a speech by Nero on his accession: 'The Senate
should retain its ancient rights, Italy and the public provinces should come
before the consuls' tribunals.' So Tacitus phrased it at any rate - did he write
these words with awareness that Italy had just been removed from the antiqua
mnnia of the Senate and the consnlum tribunalibusi Be this as it may, Italy was
now being treated like the provinces. Italy, it is true, also appeared in the
commemorative coin series which later recalled the provincial tours, with horn
of plenty - and with a sceptre, perhaps to indicate her special position. 24
There were possibly precedents for what Hadrian had done, more recent than
91 BC, at any rate for Transpadana. A senator called Julius Proculus had been
legate of the regio Transpadana, under Trajan, so it has been assumed. But this
man may have been one of the Hadrianic legates. More interesting perhaps
is the fact that Transpadana had been treated as a province under Augustus.
Suetonius, in his work On Rhetoricians, registers the protest of the orator
Albucius Silo when the eminent L. Piso sat in judgement at Mediolanum
(Milan): 'It is as if we have been reduced to the status of a province again!'
Suetonius had probably written this a good many years before. A more recent
publication of his certainly now had relevance, his Life of Augustus. There he
reported at some length how the first Princeps had the title pater patriae, Father
of the Fatherland, conferred on him by a grateful People and Senate. 'There was
a sudden and very great unanimity.' First the plebs sent a delegation to him at
Antium, but he declined the honour. Then, when he entered the city, the
attempt was repeated. Finally, in the Senate House Valerius Messalla Corvinus,
the greatest orator of the day, made a speech:
'May all go well and fortunately for you and your house, Caesar Augustus:
for we believe that with these words we pray for everlasting prosperity and
happiness for this republic. The Senate, with the consent of the Roman
People, salutes you as Father of the Fatherland.' With tears Augustus
replied: 'Having achieved all that I have prayed for, Conscript Fathers,
what else have I to ask the immortal gods, but that I am fortunate enough
to retain your common good will to the end of my life?'25
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Augustus was given the honour late, in 2 BC, twenty-five years after he had
'restored the republic.' Tiberius refused to accept it at all. But subsequent
Emperors had been content to assume the title more or less at once. Hadrian
had left it a long time, indeed had twice refused it when it was offered, no doubt
with Augustus' late acceptance in mind. Now he judged it was the right time.
Hadrians admiration for the first Princeps and his efforts over the past few years
to present himself as a second Augustus have already been stressed. A speech of
Hadrian's was quoted in late antiquity in which he asked the Conscript Fathers
- 'and I am particularly anxious to gain your consent', he stressed - to allow him
to place a silver shield in honour of Augustus in the Senate House, close to the
statue of the Emperor. It would be too much to suppose that in his imitation of
Augustus he now went to the lengths of having a delegation from the Roman
plebs coming to petition him at Antium, as in 12 BC - though Hadrian did have
a residence there, his favourite palace, according to Philostratus, where he kept
a collection of letters by the wonder-worker Apollonius of Tyana. Whether the
greatest orator of the day made the speech in the Senate, as in 12 BC, is also
doubtful. In any case, it is not clear who would enjoy that status in late 127 or
in 128. Tacitus had been acclaimed under this appellation by his friend Pliny
thirty years before; but, if he was still alive, he would have been too old and
embittered to make a public appearance of this kind. Cornelius Fronto, the star
of the next reign, was still too junior. Perhaps Annius Verus, the only man other
than the Emperor himself to have held three consulships, did the honours. At
any rate, in 128 at the latest, pater patriae became a regular part of the imperial
titulature. 26
Hadrian was taking a close interest in the family of Annius Verus, one of his
most trusted advisers, tied to him by kinship. As already mentioned, Verus'
grandson, 'Verissimus', was 'brought up under Hadrian's supervision' (literally,
'in Hadrian's lap') and had been formally enrolled among the knights at the age
of only five. When the boy was seven, in 128, Hadrian made him a member of
the Salii, an ancient priesthood reserved for patricians. Dio also stresses
Hadrian's favourable disposition towards Marcus and actually writes that it was
'because of his kinship'. What the precise relationship was remains obscure. The
Annii Veri, who came from Baetican Ucubi (Espejo), near Corduba, are likely
enough to have had links with the Aelii and Ulpii of Italica. Be that as it may,
the influence and respect enjoyed by Verus was bolstered by the family's enor-
mous wealth. Verus, now in his sixties and no longer holding office, ranked
higher, as a three times consul, than any of his peers. His consular sons-in-law,
Aurelius Antoninus and Ummidius Quadratus, were among the most respected
senators. His surviving son Libo was consul ordinarius in 128. 27
Hadrian had closer kin, to be sure - his sister Domitia Paulina and her
husband Julius Servian us, now in his late seventies. As already indicated, it is
uncertain whether their daughter Julia Paulina and son-in-law Pedanius Fuscus
Salinator were still alive - there is only a faint chance that Fuscus may have been
'the king's cousin Salan', at Athens, according to the fanciful dialogue between
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Hadrian and the silent philosopher Secundus. However this may be, their son,
Hadrian's grandnephew, survived. He was merely a child, not much older than
Marcus if Dio's statement of his age is correct - but another source has a variant
report, which would put the younger Fuscus' birth in about 113, not many years
after his parents' marriage. In that case, he would be due to assume the toga
virilis and would soon be a figure to be reckoned with, ready to enter public life
some three or four years later.28
During these years in Italy Hadrian will have kept a close watch on the
provinces. His friend Platorius Nepos was certainly now back at Rome and will
have reported on the progress of the massive frontier works. The HA even sug-
gests that Hadrian thought of his friend as a potential successor. W h o followed
Nepos in Britain is unknown, but whoever he was, he had problems. The
original plan had had to be modified, with new forts built into the line of the
Wall itself, and then a great flat-bottomed ditch with running mound on either
side (the so-called Vallum) was dug all the way along the south side of the Wall.
It would take a year or two more to complete the whole scheme. Sex. Julius
Severus, the man who had spent a good seven years as governor of Upper Dacia,
ensuring that the new dispensation there worked properly, was back at Rome at
the end of 127, to hold the consulship. He was sent back to the same region
almost at once, to be governor of Lower Moesia. Hadrian clearly valued this man
more highly than any of his other army commanders. He was to go on from
Lower Moesia to Britain. As for the other provinces, Hadrian was about to
inspect many of them again for himself.29
202
17
AFRICA
In his recently composed biography of Augustus, Suetonius had devoted a

paragraph to the first emperor's treatment of the provinces, 'and there is not one,
I believe - except, to be sure, Africa and Sardinia - in which he did not set foot'.
Only severe storms had prevented a planned tour in 36 BC. Reason enough for
Hadrian to go to Africa, which, indeed, none of his predecessors had ever seen.
He had intended a comprehensive tour of the west when he left Rome in 121,
it has been argued. But thorough inspection of the North African provinces
had had to be shelved when trouble threatening from the Parthians had required
his presence at the other end of the empire. The immense fertility of Africa
made it a 'jewel in the imperial crown'. There was much to be seen, both in the
prosperous urbanised heartland and on the frontier, where a new limes was
already under construction. The colonial elite from the proconsular province
had taken a few generations longer than their peers in Narbonensis and Spain
to rise to the summit - the 'first consul from Africa', a Pactumeius from
Numidian Cirta (Constantine), had held office in the year 80. But now, nearly
fifty years on, there were plenty of other Africans in high places, descendants
both of Italian immigrants and of enfranchised natives, senators and knights.
Latin literature, too, had received an injection of new blood from this direction.
Suetonius came from Hippo Regius (Annaba), and a young man from Cirta,
now approaching the praetorship, M. Cornelius Fronto, was later to be hailed
(with no little exaggeration) as another Cicero. Hadrian would not lack cultured
company in this part of the west. The ancient history of North Africa, the land
of Rome's greatest rival, may also have had a special appeal.1
The visit to Africa must have lasted several months, and was to be followed,
after a brief return to Italy, by a second tour of the east. As always when an
emperor was on the move, a considerable entourage went with him. The
Empress turns up in Hadrian's company in Egypt two years later. But she may
have joined him only for the journey to the east. Just one name from the higher
echelons happens to be registered with Hadrian in Africa. A young senator
whose home was Aquileia, T Caesernius Quinctianus, son of a high-ranking
procurator from the previous reign, was comes of Hadrian per Siciliam Afric(am)
Mauret(aniam). Quinctianus' father had been governor of Mauretania
203
Vs.
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GARAMANTES
Map 6 North Africa

AFRICA
Caesariensis in the year 107 and Quinctianus had probably been there with him,
albeit only a child at the time, and hence he hardly qualified as a Mauretanian
'expert'. Other senators were probably in the party as well, together with certain
holders of high office, such as the ab epistulis, perhaps still L. Julius Vestinus, the
conjectured replacement for Suetonius. Slaves and freedmen from the palace
staff would have been in attendance too, and a detachment of the Praetorian
Guard. There is a faint hint of a mention of the acting commander of the Horse
Guards, the equites singulares August^ being at Hadrians side when he addressed
the troops on the frontier in July.
It has, further, been inferred that Hadrian's friend Arrian was with him. In his
treatise on hunting, written at Athens fifteen or more years later, Arrian has an
elaborate passage describing the skill with which Numidians ran down wild
desert asses. After paraphrasing Xenophon's description of the younger Cyrus'
attempts to catch these animals, he notes that 'in my day eight-year-old
Numidian boys, riding bareback and without bridles, can overhaul desert asses
and bring them back alive and haltered.' The vividness of this account makes it
look like that of an eye-witness. 2
The inscription of Quinctianus is the sole piece of evidence for Hadrian
having visited Sicily again, only three years after his last, brief stay. Since he is
known to have climbed Etna on the previous occasion, it seems likely enough
that this time he visited the western end of the island, which was in any case in
the right direction for Africa. But Sicily was of incidental importance. Africa
was the goal, in the first instance presumably Carthage, seat of the proconsul.
W h o held this office in early summer 128 is not known. But the other three
governors who received him in North Africa are more or less firmly attested, and
all of them were newly installed. Numidia and the legion III Augusta had been
for the past two or three years under the command of a Greek from Tralles in
the province of Asia, Sex. Julius Major. When Hadrian arrived he had just
handed over to Q. Fabius Catullinus, probably a Spaniard. Of the two eques-
trian governors of Mauretania, the procurator of Caesariensis was Hadrian's old
friend Vettius Latro, who had just been governing the Cottian Alps. Promotion
to the important province of Caesariensis for a man with his modest track record
looks rather out of the ordinary. Latro's links with the Emperor from long ago,
in the legion II Adiutrix, are no doubt the explanation. Latro was himself an
African, from Thuburbo Maius. Tingitana was certainly governed between 129
and 132 by M. Gavius Maximus, who is likely enough to have been appointed
in 128. Maximus' 'official' domicile was Rome itself, but his family had long
been based at Ephesus. He was to rise to the Prefecture of the Guard at the end
of the reign. 3
The narrative section of the HA biography, at this point beginning to be
drastically abbreviated, has little detail to offer, except that from Rome Hadrian
'crossed to Africa [the stop in Sicily is not mentioned] and conferred many
benefits on the African provinces.' Two further items are added later, first, that
'he called many cities "Hadrianopolis", for example even Carthage', second, that
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'when he came to Africa, it rained for the first time for five years, and for this
reason he was popular with the Africans.' There is evidence in plenty for bene-
ficia of various kinds bestowed by Hadrian in Africa, principally the bestowal of
charters on more than a dozen towns and the granting of privileges to farmers
who cultivated marginal land. The new name 'Hadrianopolis' for Carthage does
not seem to have left any other record. It does at any rate imply a stay of some
weeks and some benefits conferred. The construction of the great aqueduct from
the mountain at Zaghouan, 35 miles (56 km) in a direct line south of the city,
but taking a circuitous course totalling 82 miles (132 km), belongs to this
period, and may have benefited from imperial subsidy. As for the rain after five
years of drought, it may be recalled that this is precisely the lapse of time since
his postulated flying visit on the way from Spain to the east.4
There are certainly signs, in his distribution of favours, that a sense of history
did play a part in Hadrian's thinking. One recipient of privilege was the oldest
city in Africa, Utica, which had been the residence of the governor during the
Republic - Carthage had been wiped off the map at the end of the third Punic
war in 146 BC, and not refounded until after Caesar's victory in the civil war a
century later. Utica was thereafter to be remembered principally as the scene of
the Younger Cato's suicide when the cause of the Republic went down. Hadrian
might be supposed, further, to have recalled an episode from Rome's first civil
war. Almost exactly 200 years before his visit, in 82 BC, a Roman governor had
been burned to death in his own praetorium at Utica by hostile Roman settlers.
The man was called C. Fabius Hadrianus - not, of course, an ancestor of
Hadrian, but, as it happens, one of only two previous Romans of this name to
enter the historical record. It may well be imagined that Hadrian, as a school-
boy forced to read Cicero, had registered the comment about Me Hadrianus,
whose avaritia Roman citizens could not tolerate. Livy had also devoted space,
in the eighty-sixth book of his great History, to the well-deserved end of the cruel
and avaricious pro-praetor. 5
Utica, long a municipium (since 36 BC), now received the title of colonia.
Its inhabitants had requested the change, clearly regarding colonia as a more
prestigious status. The request of the Uticenses to Hadrian was registered by
Aulus Gellius in a short essay on the words municeps and municipium. He quotes
Hadrian's speech before the Senate ' O n the Italicenses', the people of the
Emperor's home town. Hadrian held forth with great learning' on the subject,
'and shows himself to be surprised that his fellow-townsmen and some other
ancient municipia, among which he names the Uticenses, whereas they could
enjoy their own customs and laws, yearned for a transfer to colonial status.'
Hadrian claimed, further, that Praeneste, by contrast, had actually petitioned
Tiberius to be turned back from being a colonia into municipium, a request
which Tiberius had acceded to - as a favour, Hadrian stressed. The point was
clear enough: the old municipia had indeed simply acquired Roman citizenship
while preserving their ancient institutions; the coloniae were given a standard
constitutional charter. Hadrian might have mentioned a case from Africa, where
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the old principle had been adhered to: Lepcis Magna became a municipium
under Vespasian, while retaining its Punic chief magistrates, sufetes. But Lepcis
too had moved on to higher things, becoming a titular colonia under Trajan:
sufetes had given way to duoviri. What Hadrian must have known perfectly well
was that the provincial municipia, unlike the old Italian ones and a tiny hand-
ful in the provinces (such as Italica and Utica), enjoyed only Latin status. The
coloniae were fully Roman, and Roman provincial towns without this title felt
themselves to be at a disadvantage. Quite when Hadrian spoke in the Senate
about the petition from Italica is not clear. The odds are that it was during his
three years in Italy from 125 to 128, and that the petition from Utica also
arrived at Rome at this time. At some stage Hadrian consented to hold office
{in absentia) as quinquennalis at Italica.6
As for Latin status, Hadrian took an important step. The Latin right - Latium
or ius Latii - meant that each year the men elected to hold office in the
provincial muncipia, and their families, acquired full Roman citizenship. This
brought with it a steady but limited spread of the citizen status among the upper
stratum of the Latin west. Hadrian created an enhanced form, Latium maius,
under the terms of which not merely the magistrates and their families, but all
the town councillors - up to one hundred - became cives Romani. If this 'greater
Latin right' was now widely granted, the effect will have been a rapid increase
in Roman citizens. But further details are lacking, except for a single inscription
from African Gigthis, which petitioned for the enhanced Latin status under
Antoninus. This suggests that the grant was not automatic and universal for all
Latin municipia?
Four other cities in the proconsular province also gained the status of colonia,
Bulla Regia, Zama Regia, Lares and Thaenae. Bulla had been a municipium
for a generation, the others may have been promoted direct from the status of
peregrine (that is, non-Roman) civitas to that of colonia. The favour to Bulla and
Zama, whose name proudly recalled that they had once been royal residences in
the old Numidian kingdom, once again points to Hadrians feeling for the past.
Lares and Thaenae also had some small place in history: Marius had captured
the oppidum Lares, on the high road from Carthage to Theveste, during the
Jugurthine war; the port of Thaenae, on the coast south of Hadrumetum, had
fallen to Caesar soon after his landing in Africa. Two existing coloniae also
received favours: Uthina, an Augustan foundation 20 miles (32 km) south-west
of Carthage, and the nearby Colonia Canopitana: both registered the indulgentia
of Hadrian. Their territory was probably augmented - at the expense of
Carthage, which had been assigned a vast hinterland on its refoundation, and
could easily be slimmed down in this way.8
Ten native communities now became municipia (at least ten, one should add
- there may have been more). All but two were in or close to the fertile valleys
of the two great rivers of the province, the Bagradas and the Miliana. Mactaris
(Maktar) in the High Tell south-west of Zama Regia was the centre of an
important grain-producing region. The other exception was Turris Tamalleni,
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an oasis 50 miles (80 km) south of Capsa, in the frontier zone. Of the eight new
chartered towns further north, one may be singled out, Thuburbo Maius, which
had long been under the influence of Roman Carthage. Thuburbo was also the
home of Vettius Latro. One may readily suppose that Hadrians old officer was
instrumental in obtaining the promotion.
Other high-ranking Romans whose home was in Africa, whether or not they
were invited to join Hadrian as his comites, may well have taken the opportunity
of paying court to him there, and seeking advancement for themselves, if not for
their fellow-townsmen. The careers of two young Africans are particularly strik-
ing. Q. Lollius Urbicus, second son of a landowner at Castellum Tidditanorum,
a dependency of Cirta, had clearly already attracted Hadrian's attention. He had
been tribune in the Mainz legion, XXII Primigenia - perhaps at the time of
Hadrians visit to Germany in 121-2. After his quaestorship he had spent a
year as legate to a proconsul of Asia, possibly Pompeius Falco. He enjoyed the
favoured status of 'Caesar's candidate' in his next two posts, tribune of the plebs
and praetor, no mean achievement for a novus homo. Hadrian surely visited
Cirta and the prosperous region around it. A tiny hint of his presence at Cirta's
neighbour, Thibilis, might be invoked: a son born at about this time to the
leading family there, the Antistii, received the rare cognomen Adventus'. Did the
birth of Q. Antistius Adventus, who was to have a successful career under
M. Aurelius, coincide with Hadrian's arrival? The other young African to benefit
from Hadrian's favour was P. Salvius Julianus, whose home was apparently
Hadrumetum (Sousse). He was even younger than Lollius Urbicus and his talents
lay in a different direction: Roman law. Two or three years later, as Hadrian's
quaestor, Julianus was to be given a special commission to codify the 'praetor's
edict'.9
Large tracts of the province of Africa were crown land, imperial domain,
supervised by procurators of the patrimonium. Much had fallen to the emperors
by confiscation, notably under Nero: he had put to death six men who between
them 'owned half the province', so the Elder Pliny claimed. Crown land
throughout the empire was an important source of imperial revenue and, par-
ticularly in Africa, of food supply. The system of cultivation involved leasing
substantial parcels of land to tenants-in-chief, conductores, who, for the peasants
who actually worked the soil, were their effective landlords, to whom they paid
their rent in kind. All the same, the Emperor, through his procurators, could be
appealed to, particularly if the leaseholder became oppressive. Two inscriptions
from imperial estates in the Bagradas valley quote a 'law of Hadrian', lex
Hadriana, laying down new regulations for land tenure. A 'statement of the
procurators' begins with reference to 'Our Caesar's tireless concern which he
unceasingly exercises for the benefit of mankind'. In effect, Hadrian followed up
a measure taken by Trajan at the end of his reign, which extended to imperial
estates a system already operating in Africa: those who cultivated marginal waste
land were exempted from rents for several years when vines, figs and olives were
planted, and acquired provisional title over land unallotted in the original
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centuriation. This had been fostered by the lex Manciana, probably a measure
instituted by a private landowner called Mancia, if not by a proconsul of that
name. Hadrians new dispensation - which may have applied on imperial estates
across the empire, not just in Africa - instituted further and more detailed appli-
cation of this policy. Those who occupied and planted centuriated land with
vines and olives acquired rights of possession and inheritance. 10
It may be conjectured that the tour of the urbanised area and of the rich
agricultural hinterland took up to two months. At the latest by the end of June
Hadrian was already in the military district, Numidia, where the writ of the
proconsul had effectively ceased to run nearly a century before. The legate of
the only legion in North Africa, III Augusta, was in practice the imperial
legate of Numidia. Fabius Catullinus, not long in post, had been preparing
for the visit with care, not least by training the troops so that they could impress
the Emperor. He had also dedicated, on behalf of the legion, a pair of altars:
to Jupiter Best and Greatest, the Lord of divine rainstorms, and to the 'Winds
that have power to bring beneficent rainstorms' {ventis bonarum tempestatum
potentibus). It was a suitable thanksgiving for the spring rains that had coincided
with Hadrian's landing in Africa, after five years of drought. Ill Augusta had just
acquired a new base, Lambaesis, over 60 miles (100 km) to the south-west of
its former station Ammaedara. Work on the new fortress was still in progress.
So too was the construction of the new frontier-barrier, 150 miles (240 km)
further south, beyond Mons Aurasius (the Aures Mountains). It would no doubt
have been absurd to attempt to erect a continuous artificial limes in Africa, as
was being done in Britain in stone, and in Germania Superior and Raetia with
timber. Neither the materials nor the labour-force were available in Africa to
demarcate the whole vast distance from the Atlantic to the borders of Egypt.
Nor was a continuous barrier right across the land necessary. A desert frontier
can be controlled by blocking the routes past the oases. All the same, several long
stretches were constructed, which show a close resemblance in conception to the
Wall in Britain. 11
South of the outpost fort of Gemellae, which had just been established, ran
a length of nearly 40 miles (60 km), screening a zone of dense palm-groves. It
took the form of a wall over 6 feet (2 m) thick, of sun-dried mud bricks, with
a gateway each Roman mile and a tower midway between each pair of gates. It
was fronted by a continuous ditch, crossed by causeways only opposite the gates.
Some 30 miles (50 km) to the north, east of the Hodna Mountains, another
continuous wall, 28 miles (c. 45 km) long, was built, either of stone or an upcast
bank, of which the width varies between 5 and 13 feet (1.5-4 m), again fronted
by a ditch. The towers seem to have been placed at irregular intervals, some
behind, some in front and some astride the 'Wall'. Here too there seem to have
been gateways and at least in some sectors fortlets as well as towers. A third such
sector has been claimed, some 44 miles (70 km) in length, far to the south-east
of Lambaesis, beyond the base Ad Majores (built in the year 105 by the legate
Minicius Natalis). But what has been identified as the ditch of such a limes may
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just belong to the east-west frontier road. Across the provincial border, in
Mauretania Caesariensis, one further running barrier, nearly 90 miles (140 km)
long, seems to have almost completely encircled a major part of the Hodna
Mountains. Here too was a wall, with ditch, towers and forts. 12
The clear evidence in the Gemellae sector for regular crossing-points shows
that the system was designed to control access to the empire. Seasonal migration
by the semi-nomad or transhumant peoples of the desert was to continue, but
under conditions closely supervised by the army. O n the Roman side of the
frontier agriculture could now flourish, above all olive-cultivation. Further
lengths of limes may await discovery, it is true. But it seems that for much of the
frontier zone, particularly in Mauretania Tingitana and western Caesariensis, it
was deemed sufficient to keep the peace, without building a running barrier, by
means of roads, patrols and watchtowers. 13
By good fortune substantial parts of a massive inscription at Lambaesis
illuminate Hadrian's tour of some of the military bases. His visit was commem-
orated by the erection of an enormous column. Its base carried the text of
addresses of his to three auxiliary regiments and to the senior centurions and the
cavalrymen of the legion. The soldiers had performed exercises and manoeuvres
before the Emperor. In the second half of June he spoke to the cohors II
Hispanorum.
What others would have spread over several days took you only one to
finish: you have built a wall, a lengthy construction, normally made for
permanent winter-quarters, in not much more time than is required for a
turf rampart - and in that kind of work the turves are cut to standard size,
are easy to carry and handle and can be laid without difficulty. You have
built with stones, large, heavy and irregular at that, which no one can carry
or lift or lay without these irregularities being noticeable. You have cut a
ditch in a straight line through hard and rough gravel and have made it
smooth by levelling. When the work was approved, you entered camp at
speed, got your food and weapons and followed the cavalry that had gone
ahead, hailing them with a great shout as they returned.
Manoeuvres followed, also evidently approved.
I compliment my legate Catullinus for having instituted for your unit this
exercise which has taken on the appearance of genuine combat and he is
training you so well that I can compliment you too. Your prefect
Cornelianus has also done his work to my satisfaction.
But some words of criticism were added for the cavalry section of the cohort.
'Open order tactics I do not approve o f - here he quoted an authority on
military science whose name is lost in a gap. A trooper should ride out from
cover and be more cautious in pursuit - if he doesn't watch where he's going and
can check his horse at will, he is exposed to hidden pitfalls.' 14
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These words nicely illustrate Dio's statement about Hadrian and the army -
his inspecting and investigating everything in person, weapons, engines,
trenches, ramparts and palisades, drilling the soldiers for every kind of battle,
honouring some and reproving others and teaching them what they should do.
The HA biographer's comment, introducing the tour of the German frontier,
that 'while he was eager for peace rather than war, he trained the soldiers as if
war were imminent', is also amply confirmed. Fabius Catullinus, and no doubt
all the army commanders, had had their instructions: the exercitatio of cohors II
Hispanorum resembled real warfare, had the verae dimicationis imago. After
Hadrian's death, Cornelius Fronto could be sarcastic about this policy: 'After the
Emperor Trajan the armies had virtually no discipline. Hadrian was energetic
enough in collecting his friends together and giving eloquent speeches to the
armies and in general in the appliances of war' - yet he abandoned Trajan's
conquests, and merely toured the empire. Fronto's further cutting comments
about the armies being pandered to by being allowed to use 'wicker weapons'
instead of swords and shields are specifically applied only to Asia. But Fronto
was writing over twenty-five years after Hadrian's death. The decline of militaris
disciplina in the army of Syria that he lamented in the 160s can hardly be
blamed on Hadrian. 15
'Imp. Caesar Traianus Hadrianus Augustus addressed his legion III Augusta,
having inspected their exercises, in the words written below, Torquatus for the
second time and Libo being the consuls, on the Kalends of July.' Parts of his
remarks, directed atpilos, 'to the senior centurions', and to the legionary cavalry,
are preserved. The legate had told him about the legion's special problems:
that one cohort is absent, because it has been sent on the annual rota to
serve in the officium of the proconsul; that two years ago you gave up one
cohort and four men from each century to reinforce your comrades of the
Third; that many outposts, and widely scattered ones, split you up; that
within my own memory you have not only changed base twice but have
built a new fortress.
(By 'your comrades of the Third' Hadrian meant either III Gallica in the army
of Syria, or III Cyrenaica, also stationed in the east.) In view of these special
circumstances, 'I would have excused you if the legion had given up training
long since - but you have not given it up.' Rather, he no doubt went on to say
- the text has a break here - it performed excellently. The senior centurions
displayed their two customary qualities, one of which, agility, is recorded; a gap
in the stone makes it necessary to guess what the other one was. The legionary
cavalry, only 120 strong, were warmly praised.
Military exercises have, in a way, their own rules: if anything is added to

or removed from them, the exercise either becomes less useful or too
difficult. You performed the most difficult of difficult exercises, throwing
the javelin while wearing the cuirass . . . I also approve your spirit. 16
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Six days later, on the Nones (7th) of July, Hadrian was at Zarai, beyond Diana
Veteranorum (Zana), on the road to Mauretania Caesariensis. Here he inspected
a cohort, but neither its name nor more than two-and-a-half words from his
speech have been preserved. Between 8 and 14 July he inspected two more units,
the Ala I Pannoniorum and the cohors VI Commagenorum. He told the
Pannonians that
you have done everything according to the book: you filled the training-
ground with your manoeuvres, you threw your javelins not inelegantly,
even though using short and stiff ones, and you mounted both today and
yesterday with agility and speed. Had anything been lacking, I would wish
it to be done, if anything had particularly stood out, I would mention it
- you pleased me equally throughout the whole exercise. My legate the
Right Honourable {vir clarissimus) Catullinus devotes equal care to all the
tasks he has charge of and your prefect. . . [the name is missing] appears
to look after you attentively. Accept a largess!
At this point a few words follow which long defied explanation, until it was
suggested that they represent, not a closing sentence from the Emperor's
harangue to the Pannonians, but his order, after his speech was over, to an officer
at his side: 'Viator, now to the training-grounds of the Commagenians, at the
trot!' This suggests that Hadrian had spoken impromptu, not from a prepared
text, and that his addresses to the troops were carefully taken down by a stenog-
rapher on the staff of the legate Catullinus. As for Viator, he was, it is argued, the
centurion M. Calventius Viator. Two years later, at any rate, Viator was acting
commander of the Horse Guards at Hadrian's side in Arabia. Ten years earlier
he had been commanding the horse guards of the governor of Dacia, Avidius
Nigrinus. It has even been inferred that his promotion to a position by
the Emperor's side was a reward for services rendered, that he had revealed the
treasonable plans of his chief. It has also been conjectured that Arrian was on
the platform with Hadrian as he spoke to the troops. At any rate, it may not be
coincidence that Arrian's own work on Tactics, written eight years later, seems to
echo closely some of the Emperor's remarks to the Hispani and Commageni. 1 7
The cavalry section of the cohors VI Commagenorum also performed to his
satisfaction. 'It is difficult for the cavalrymen of a cohort to make a good
impression, even more so after a display by troopers in an aid, Hadrian began.
The cavalrymen in part-mounted cohorts were less well paid and of lower
standard than those in the cavalry regiments proper. Hadrian made the point
very specifically. 'The men in the alae have more space in their training-ground
and more javelin-men, their right wheel is in close array, their Cantabrian attack
is closely knit, their fine horses and equipment are in keeping with their pay.' The
praise that followed shows that Hadrian was by now beginning to notice the
burning African sun: 'You dispelled my discomfort from the heat by energetically
doing what you had to do, you threw your slingstones and shot your arrows,
you mounted briskly everywhere.' Once again Catullinus was singled out for
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praise - his merits are the more apparent 'because he has men like you under his
command.' No wonder Catullinus took care to have the Emperor's words carved
on stone. He received his reward eighteen months later, the consulship for the
year 130, as ordinarius, a distinction not known to have been enjoyed by any of
his predecessors in the Numidian command. 1 8
In mid-July, then, it may be supposed, after the inspection of the army,
Hadrian crossed from Numidia into Mauretania Caesariensis. Apart from the
commemorative coinage which registers Mauretania on three separate issues, not
much can be said about his visit, except that two cities on the coast received
enhanced status. Tipasa, midway between Caesarea, the capital, and Icosium
(Algiers), became a colonia and Choba, also situated between two coloniae,
Igilgili and Saldae (Bougie), became a municipium. Whether the visit extended
beyond Caesariensis into Tingitana is uncertain. The furthest trace of his
journey in the west comes from the little town of Quiza (Pont du Chelif), on
the way to Portus Magnus (Bettioua) in Caesariensis. At any rate, an arch was
set up in his honour at Quiza in this year. Perhaps he chose to sail back to Italy
from Portus Magnus. 19
The tour was later to be recalled lavishly on the imperial coinage. Three issues
celebrate Africa herself, Hadrian's arrival there and his work as 'restorer' of the
province. The personified Africa is depicted in several different ways. In the
province series she is reclining on the ground, wearing a long tunic and cloak -
but on some coins her breast is bare - with an elephant-skin head-dress. Several
coins allude to the fertility of Africa, showing a large basket full of fruit and
corn-ears. One shows her leaning on the fruit-basket, with her right hand
resting on a lion. The restitutor coins and some of the adventus ones show Africa
standing to face the Emperor, holding corn-ears in her hand. There is no special
issue for the army of Africa, but one of the adventus coins has a martial flavour:
Africa wears a military style of tunic and carries a flag (vexillum). The visit to
Mauretania was commemorated by coins showing the personified province
alone and others depicting Hadrian's adventus, as well as by an issue for the
exercitus Mauretanicus. Mauretania is shown in military dress, with short boots,
holding one or more javelins, and she is accompanied by a horse. O n some coins
showing the adventus she is standing opposite Hadrian, with an altar between
them, ready to sacrifice a bull, and has the same elephant head-dress as Africa;
and one type shows her in civilian dress, long tunic and cloak, and holding corn-
ears. The exercitus issue shows Hadrian on horseback, raising his right hand and
addressing three soldiers. 20
As soon as Hadrian's return was announced, the Senate took care to respond
appropriately. An inscription found at Labici in Latium records that a senator
named P. Cluvius Maximus Paullinus, an ex-praetor, had been 'a legate sent by
the Senate to the Emperor Hadrian when he returned from Africa. There were
presumably other senators assigned to the task - and, indeed, it was probably
standard practice for the Senate to despatch legates to receive a returning
emperor. The model was the delegation that had welcomed Augustus in
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AFRICA
Campania in 19 BC, on his return from the east. Hadrian was not going to stay
in Italy very long when he arrived back in summer 128. In fact, he can hardly
have remained for much more than two months: time enough to inspect the
numerous building projects under way at both Rome and Tibur, and to assure
himself that the capital was in safe hands. He must have made it plain to the
key figures, first and foremost the Guard Prefect Marcius Turbo, that he would
not be back for several years. His first goal was Greece, where his plans were now
coming to fruition. From there he would go once more to Asia, this time to
inspect the southern part, to Cappadocia and Syria, and then, via Arabia and
Judaea, to Egypt. At least three years would be required.21
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HADRIANUS OLYMPIUS
In September 128, five years after his initiation into the first grade, Hadrian
took part in the Mysteries at Eleusis again. Once more he joined the mystae for
the ritual bath in the sea, the three days fasting and the procession from Athens,
with the statue of Iacchus going before. This time they could cross the stately
new bridge over the Cephisus which the imperial mystes had had built. With the
crowded throng in the telesterion he would wait all night for the climax of the
rites, when a great fire was lit and the hierophant cried out "The Mistress has
borne a sacred child!" and showed the initiates the great mystery, an ear of corn,
cut in silence. So, at least, a Christian writer two generations later claimed: that
was all that the secret rituals amounted to. All the same, the symbolism of death
and rebirth is clear enough. Those who were ready to be moved would be
affected. Hadrian, now an epoptes, one who had seen the mystery, may well have
felt himself reborn to a new life. This is the inference to be drawn from a
remarkable coin-issue, one of the cistophori struck in Asia Minor. Hadrian is
shown standing with a corn-sheaf in his right hand, with the legend 'Hadrianus
Aug[ustus] p[ater] p[atriae]\ followed by the letters ren. This can only mean
'renatus\ 'reborn'; the ears of corn denote the Mysteries of Demeter. O n the
obverse Hadrian's Roman exemplar is portrayed with the simple legend 'Imp.
Caesar Augustus'. The first Princeps was the only emperor before Hadrian to
have been initiated; and he had likewise advertised the fact on the Asian
cistophori with a reverse depicting ears of corn. 1
As always, Hadrian will have come with a great entourage: the Empress,
friends and courtiers, military escort, household retainers. Hadrian's grand-
nephew Pedanius Fuscus, now in his mid-teens, may have been in the party.
His parents, not heard of again after the elder Fuscus' consulship in 118, were
probably no longer living. The boy must have been regarded as the heir
presumptive. A coeval of Fuscus, the Emperor's beloved Antinous, must surely
have been there too, even though no source attests his presence. The mass of
later evidence which seems to associate Antinous with Eleusis at least makes it
plausible that he was initiated with Hadrian. What remains puzzling, because
there are no precedents or parallels, is just how public Antinous' presence was.
Hadrian was now, more than ever, revelling in his role as the reviver of
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HADRIANUS OLYMPIUS
• • J*' V •
%*?? J?J v ' " /

Plate 23 Hadrian 'reborn' after his initiation into the higher grade at Eleusis
Hellenism. W h y not suppose that he was proud and happy to display Antinous
at his side, seeing himself as the traditional Hellenic lover of a beautiful youth,
an erastes, Antinous as his eromenosi1
Of the more conventional companions of the prince, comites Augusti, only
Caesernius Statianus is explicitly attested, the younger brother of Quinctianus,
who had been with Hadrian in Sicily and North Africa. Other senators were no
doubt also in attendance, for example Hadrian's former quaestor, the younger
Minicius Natalis - he was, at any rate, in Greece the following summer, when
he won the four-horse chariot race at the 227th Olympiad. An equestrian kins-
man of the Caesernii, L. Statius Macedo, also from Aquileia, a tribune of the
Guard, was probably commanding part of the military escort, a detachment of
praetorians. The centurion Calventius Viator, whose presence at Hadrian's side
has been detected at Lambaesis, is known to have been acting commander of the
Horse Guards in Arabia the next year and was probably already in the party.
Hadrian's sharp-witted friend Valerius Eudaemon may already have vacated his
post as ab epistulis Graecis. His next appointment was as financial procurator
responsible for a vast tract of southern Asia Minor, from Lycia-Pamphylia to
Paphlagonia. Hadrian probably appointed a new Greek Secretary at this time,
his philosopher friend Heliodorus the Epicurean. At any rate, whether or not
Secretary and philosopher are identical, Avidius Heliodorus, whose home was
Cyrrhus in Syria, was with Hadrian in Egypt two years later.3
Heliodorus' nomination provoked a sarcastic comment from a rival
intellectual, Dionysius of Miletus, also called by the Roman names T. Claudius
Flavianus: 'Caesar can give you money and office, but he cannot make you an
orator.' Dionysius was a pupil of Isaeus, whose lectures Hadrian had also
attended. Perhaps the remark was prompted by jealousy. Dionysius might have
hoped for the post of Secretary himself. Philostratus reports that Dionysius
was also on bad terms with another of Hadrian's secretaries, Caninius Celer
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HADRIANUS OLYMPIUS
- 'from their earliest youth'. Celer's rhetorical talents were supposedly mediocre.
Rhetorical brilliance was perhaps not what Hadrian was looking for. Heliodorus
could probably offer other qualities. Not least, when there was important
business to transact in Syria, a man from Cyrrhus - who may even have been
linked with the old royal house of Commagene - could be particularly useful.
As for Dionysius, Dio asserts that Hadrian was suspicious of him, as he was of
others with great talent. Still, as Philostratus also reveals, Dionysius nonetheless
received from Hadrian the rank of knight, procuratorships and membership of
the Alexandrian Mouseion. 4
Only two places in Greece are known to have seen Hadrian in 128-9, Athens
(with Eleusis) and Sparta. His host at Athens was probably Atticus, now a Roman
senator with prospects of a consulship not far off. It may be, though, that Atticus
was away from home, on official duties. He might have been given a province
to govern. It has even been suggested that he had been made legate of Dacia
Superior in the previous year, which seems rather implausible for a man not
known to have had any military experience. The outgoing governor, Sex. Julius
Severus, the very model of a Roman vir militaris, had ruled the province for over
seven years, from 119 or 120 until his consulship in late 127. Whether Atticus
was at Athens or not, his son Herodes had probably returned from Rome again.
After being Hadrian's quaestor he had held office as archon at Athens, which was
probably followed by a further stay in Rome as tribune of the plebs. It seems
likely that Herodes would have made sure of being at home when the Emperor
took up residence again. Another house which would certainly have been able to
sustain the imperial guests was that of King Philopappus, whose massive funerary
monument stood on the Hill of the Muses. The grandson of the last king of
Commagene was long dead, but his sister Julia Balbilla was very much alive. She
was a close friend of Sabina and probably accompanied the party from Athens to
the east - two years later she is found with them in Egypt. 5
A second stay at Sparta is explicitly documented. In the interval since his
visit in early 125, Hadrian had accepted, in absentia, the office of eponymous
magistrate there, patronomos. He had already conferred benefits on the Spartans
and may now have given authority for the city to purchase wheat from Egypt,
normally strictly reserved for Rome itself. A prominent Spartan held office at
about this time as 'commissioner for grain from Egypt'. The very presence
of the Emperor and his entourage will have created logistical problems, here as
elsewhere. 6
It was appropriate - and surely no coincidence - that it was precisely Athens
and Sparta that were to the fore among the Hellenes of Greece proper in gaining
membership of the Roman Senate at this time. Some of the Greeks of Asia had
taken this step a generation earlier. Athenians and Spartans may previously have
been reluctant, nervous that they might feel out of place in the Roman curia, or
simply too proud. Hadrian had perhaps been able to persuade the heads of the
leading families at Athens and Sparta that they could accept senatorial status
without suffering any indignity. Claudius Atticus, the leading Athenian, was
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HADRIANUS OLYMPIUS
given the rank of ex-praetor and within a few years would hold the consulship.
His Spartan counterpart, Julius Eurycles Herculanus, was presumably consider-
ably younger, which no doubt explains why he had a more a less normal career,
beginning as quaestor, in his home province Achaia, and going on to be tribune
of the plebs and praetor at Rome. This was followed by a year as legate to the
proconsul of Baetica. It was suggested earlier that the proconsul under whom
Herculanus had served in the far west was none other than Hadrian's friend
Arrian. The Baetican legation was followed by a further post, as commander of
a legion III, evidently III Gallica in Syria. Although Herculanus' ancestor
Eurycles had fought at Actium, virtually no army service is known for the inter-
vening generations. But the Spartans were traditionally the most martial of all
the Greeks. It is an attractive guess that Herculanus might have been offered the
command of a legion by Hadrian at the time of his second visit to Sparta.
A corollary might be that Herculanus travelled to the east with the Emperor in
129, and took up his command in Syria when the imperial party arrived there. 7
For Hadrian the visit to Sparta was surely more than sentimental. His plans for
the Greeks, now crystallising, were centred, to be sure, on Athens. But it was only
natural for him to treat with particular sensitivity the city which had shared the
dual hegemony with the Athenians 600 years before. This would in any case be
welcome in contemporary Athens. Atticus claimed descent from Miltiades and
from Cimon, the great advocate of Athenian co-operation with Sparta, and he
himself had spent some time at Sparta in his youth. Now the Hellenes, with
Hadrian the adoptive Athenian at the forefront, were actively recreating and re-
enacting their glorious past, the age of the Persian wars above all. When the Great
King invaded, the Hellenes had stood together united (with a few exceptions) in
'the League against the Mede'. Their victory at Plataea, of which the 600th
anniversary had recently occurred, was still commemorated in Hadrian's day.
Athens had sought to continue the crusade and to liberate the Greeks of Asia.
Sparta had opted out. After three decades, in the face of mounting opposition,
Pericles put through the Athenian assembly a decree 'to invite all the Hellenes,
wherever they lived in Europe or in Asia, whether in a small polis or a great
one, to send delegates to Athens to deliberate on the Hellenic shrines which the
barbarians had destroyed and the sacrifices owed to the gods.' Twenty Athenians
of mature years had been despatched to urge their fellow-Greeks to attend 'and
take part in resolutions on peace and on the common welfare of Hellas'. Nothing
had come of it, because of Spartan opposition - instead, indeed, bitter decades of
conflict between the Hellenes. 8
There can be no doubt that Hadrian and his entourage, with Atticus and
Eurycles Herculanus to the fore, were consciously thinking of these events. The
literature of the age is focused to the point of obsession with the people and
deeds of the fifth and fourth centuries BC. Perhaps it was all a charade; but for
the elite, at least, it was one that gave them enormous satisfaction. Hadrian
had apparently initially contemplated making the Amphictyons of Delphi the
instrument for his regeneration of Hellas. In his letter to the Delphians three
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HADRIANUS OLYMPIUS
and a half years earlier he had recommended changes in membership, referring
explicitly to a proposal to bring in the Spartans, 'so that the synedrion [council]
should be a common synedrion of all the Hellenes'. But the scheme did not go
through, perhaps because of Spartan resistance. The Spartans at some point sent
an embassy to meet Hadrian at Nicopolis, either when he was leaving for Sicily
in 125 or when he arrived in Greece in summer 128. Perhaps they had been
anxious to explain their position on Panhellenic matters. 9
Whatever the details, Hadrian was now ready to implement a new and
much more ambitious plan. The 'synedrion of all the Hellenes' at Delphi would,
after all, even if reconstituted, have been only an assembly of the poleis of the
motherland. Yet the Hellenes were spread far and wide beyond the boundaries
of old Greece. It was evidently during his second stay in Greece as Emperor that
Hadrian devised a new and grandiose programme. He would create a Hellenic
commonwealth which would include all those poleis which could prove their
authentic Hellenic origins. In other words, Hadrian was bringing the abortive
programe of Pericles to fruition. He would create a Panhellenion, an association
of all the Hellenes, with its centre at Athens. The groundwork was - literally -
done: the great temple of Heavenly Zeus, the Olympieion, was being given the
finishing touches. A stately enclosure was going up around it. Within this sacred
temenos the delegates of the Hellenes would convene. 10
The great temple of Zeus was only one item in Hadrian's Athenian building
programme. He also launched the construction of two other temples, for Hera
and Zeus Panhellenios, and a shrine for all the gods, a Pantheon. Further, on the
north side of the Roman Agora there was to arise a magnificent structure, often
referred to as Hadrian's 'Library', also known as Hadrian's Stoa, and even called,
anachronistically, 'the main building of Athens University'. Although it had a
section where books were kept, mentioned by Pausanias, and two auditoria can
be identified in the remains, Pausanias gives no clue to its function, laying stress
in particular on its hundred columns of Phrygian marble. The building's plan in
fact recalls the Forum of Peace at Rome, erected by Vespasian. Other substantial
public works in the vicinity might also be part of this programme. Apart from
work carried out in the old city - on the north side of the Acropolis - there
was considerable development in the area of the Olympieion by the Ilissus. O n
the opposite side of the river from the great shrine of Zeus there was to be a new
gymnasium, adorned with a hundred columns of Numidian marble. This part
of Athens around the Olympieion was formally reconstituted as a new deme,
'Hadrian's town'. 11
A young senator from Cirta in Numidia, Pactumeius Clemens, who was to
achieve a modest reputation as a jurist, held a special position at about this time
as 'legate of Hadrian at Athens, Thespiae and Plataea, and in Thessaly'. No clue
is given to the nature of his duties, but one might surmise that he played some
part in the preparations for the convening of the Hellenic assembly.12
Plutarch, who alone records the Congress decree of Pericles, also registers the
fact that the Athenian statesman was called 'Olympian'. Hadrian, the new
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HADRIANUS OLYMPIUS
Pericles - who was in addition completing the temple of Olympian Zeus - now
himself assumed this name. What procedure or ceremony prompted the step is
not recorded - perhaps it was formally proposed in the Athenian assembly? At
any rate, from the year 129 onwards he was regularly so named all over the
Greek part of the empire: Hadrianos Sebastos Olympios, or, indeed, Hadrianos
Sebastos Zeus Olympios - for some of the exuberant or sycophantic Greeks soon
identified him with Olympian Zeus. 13
To convene an inaugural assembly of such a body required several years of
intensive planning. Lists would need to be drawn up of eligible or potentially
eligible states, of which there were hundreds all over the eastern half of the
empire and well beyond. Both the literature and the material remains of the age
- local coinage, inscriptions and statuary - give the impression that a principal
preoccupation of many a city was to demonstrate the antiquity and authenticity
of its Hellenic origins. Homer and Greek mythology were deployed with
remarkable ingenuity to prove foundation by Perseus or other, sometimes little
known, not to say invented, figures from the heroic age. Such claims would need
testing in some cases.14
It fitted neatly into Hadrian's Panhellenic programme that he was on his way
to the eastern frontiers. The Persian empire was no more; but there was a
contemporary equivalent, an Iranian power that had some pretensions to have
taken its place. Invitations were being sent out at this time to client rulers and
kings beyond the Euphrates to attend another 'durbar' in 129. Perhaps the
Parthian Chosroes was invited to another colloquium. His position as Great King
was no less under challenge than it had been for two and a half decades, but it
evidently suited Hadrian to deal with him rather than with his rival Vologaeses.
At all events, as a sweetener, Hadrian sent back the king's daughter, in Roman
captivity these past twelve years or more. He also offered to return the royal
throne of the Arsacids, the sella regiaP
As always, the business of the Roman state came to Hadrian, wherever he was.
In early March 129 he had to give an opinion on a question of inheritance law.
It resulted from the claim by the treasury on the estate of one Rusticus. Hadrian
wrote to the Senate with a proposal which was laid before the House by the
consuls. Juventius Celsus, holding office for the second time, was a leading
jurist, one of three singled out by the HA, along with Neratius Priscus and
Salvius Julianus, as a regular member of the imperial consilium. Priscus was by
now probably dead. It was his brother Marcellus who held the fasces, also for the
second time, with Celsus at the beginning of the year. Marcellus had already
been replaced by a suffect when Hadrian's letter arrived. O n 14 March the
Senate's decree, the SC Juventianum, was duly implemented. Salvius Julianus,
the third and youngest of the three jurists, a brilliant young man not yet a
senator, may have been in Hadrian's suite at this time. 16
Celsus, at any rate, would soon join the Emperor, for he was to take up office
as proconsul of Asia in the spring. Like all proconsuls of this province, Celsus
had the right to appoint three legates. But this time, it may be, one of them was
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chosen for him by the Emperor. A 'descendant of kings and tetrarchs', including
Attalus of Pergamum, Deiotarus and Amyntas, C. Julius Severus of Ancyra, was
'legate in Asia in accordance with a letter and codicilli of the God Hadrian', as
his inscription reveals, and the appointment can be dated to about this time.
This eminent person, 'first among the Greeks' - a title which others could lay
claim to - had remained outside the Senate, surprisingly enough, under Trajan,
when so many of his kinsmen enjoyed this status. Hadrian had clearly persuaded
him, like Claudius Atticus the Athenian and Eurycles Herculanus of Sparta, to
accept Roman rank. He had entered the Senate as an ex-tribune and had held a
praetorship. Now Hadrian had responsible work for him, in Asia first - other
posts would soon follow. The presence of a select handful of senators with the
Emperor at all times must indeed be postulated. They would form his travelling
consilium}7
There was a full programme in the eastern provinces and Hadrian's
departure from Greece can hardly have been later than March. The two
Ephesian captains, Erastus and Philocyrius, who had brought him and his
party from Ephesus to Rhodes five years before, were engaged again, as
Hadrian's letters on their behalf reveal, to ship part of the imperial entourage.
Hadrian wrote to the magistrates and council of the Ephesians asking that the
two men be made councillors, and specifying that 'I came to you from Eleusis.'
The Ephesians could congratulate themselves that Hadrian chose to come a
second time to their city, rather than, for example, to one of their great rivals,
Pergamum or Smyrna. In truth, the reason was simply logistical. The itinerary
of this year was in effect a continuation of the journey of 124. This time
Hadrian wanted to inspect the southern part of the province Asia and make a
detour into Lycia. Ephesus would benefit. 18
In an inscription of 129 'the council and people of the Ephesians' honoured
Hadrian - already with the name Olympios - to express their thanks to their
'founder and saviour' for a whole series of benefactions. They list first his 'un-
surpassable gifts to Artemis': the goddess now gained the right to accept legacies.
A series of practical measures follow: the city was permitted to import corn from
Egypt - the same concession that Sparta had received - and Hadrian had
launched a scheme to make the harbours more navigable by dredging and to
prevent further silting by diverting the River Cayster. The request for permission
to buy Egyptian grain may have been made the previous year by a city aware
from recent experience that the imperial presence for some weeks or even
months would create serious supply problems. A partly preserved letter inscribed
on stone at Ephesus could be Hadrian's cautious reply. It begins with a reference
to 'the greatness of your . . . city and the large number of its inhabitants'.
Priority has to go to 'the reigning city', but when Rome has been supplied, the
other cities too can benefit - 'providing that the Nile, as we pray, floods to the
usual extent and an abundance of wheat is raised among the Egyptians, then you
too, among the first after my ancestral city will be considered.' Ephesus also took
care to honour the Prefect of Egypt, T. Flavius Titian us, with a statue. 19
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There were probably frequent applications for such concessions, but the
special circumstances of Hadrian's travels with a large entourage would give
the cities along his route particular reason to seek such help. The organisation
of his itinerary must indeed have been a matter for intense and careful planning.
Some eight months before he arrived in Egypt in summer 130, preparations
were in hand well up the Nile, at Oxyrhyncus, to cater for his anticipated
visit. At another city in Asia, Tralles, on the route eastwards from Ephesus, the
purchase of Egyptian corn was likewise permitted. The Trallians and resident
Roman citizens showed their gratitude to the wealthy man, A. Fabricius
Priscianus Charmosynus, who paid for the 60,000 bushels that Hadrian had
authorised them to buy. 20
Ephesus was the first city Hadrian visited after assuming the title Olympius,
which from 129 would regularly appear in his titulature all over the Greek half
of the empire. Another Ephesian issue of the cistophori, which had already cele-
brated Hadrian's initiation at Eleusis and 'rebirth', now proclaimed the new
distinction. Hadrian is shown on the obverse with the legend 'Hadrianus
Augustus cos. Ill p.p. \ and on the reverse, as in in continuation of these titles,
appear the words 'Iovis Olympius, the - archaic - Latin form of Zeus Olympios,
who had an ancient temple at Ephesus. The god is shown sitting on his throne
with sceptre in his left hand, while his outstretched right hand holds an image
of the Ephesian Artemis. Identification of Emperor and Olympian Zeus is surely
intended. Ephesus still did not achieve a second neocorate, temple-wardenship,
of the imperial cult. The honour could not be long delayed: a new temple to
the God Hadrian was being built. All in all, even if Smyrna still had the edge in
some respects, Ephesus was boosted to new heights by this visit.21
After Ephesus another great city of western Asia had its turn to receive
Hadrian: Miletus, mother-city of scores of Greek colonies. If the Emperor
travelled by land, there should have been a stop on the way at Priene and the
venerable shrine of the 'Panionians' nearby. Apart from Miletus itself, there
was the Milesians' great temple of Apollo a few miles away at Didyma, with its
oracle. The day of Hadrian's visit there was to be commemorated as holy and he
was honoured as 'Olympian, saviour and founder'. One of those who may have
received Hadrian was the sophist Dionysius, a native of Miletus. 22
The imperial itinerary becomes exceptionally difficult to reconstruct at this
stage. O n 27 June 129 Hadrian was evidently already some distance inland, at
Laodicea on the Lycus, and a few weeks later even further north, in Phrygia.
One might assume that he had set off from Ephesus along the great eastern high-
way, following the Maeander valley. Stops at Tralles, the home of his secretary
Phlegon, and nearby Nysa, from which his chamberlain Alcibiades derived, may
surely be postulated. Nysa was also the residence of a rising senator, Sex. Julius
Major, originally from nearby Tralles, whose Latin nomenclature masks his
Greek descent - he shared an ancestor with Antonius Polemo in the shape of
Pythodorus of Tralles, whose daughter had been the wife of two kings. Major's
career had been much favoured: he had already governed Numidia and held the
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consulship and would soon be governing one of the Moesias. All the same, there
are strong hints that Hadrian also went further south in 129 and visited Lycia.
At Patara the governor Mettius Modestus set up a splendid arch, which may be
associated with Hadrian's arrival. Several members of Modestus' family are
named with the governor and may be assumed to have been with him in the
province. Modestus' term of office was now ending: he evidently joined the
imperial retinue and left Lycia with Hadrian - taking with him a poet, Paion of
Pamphylian Side. 23
At all events, by late June Hadrian was on the borders of Caria, at Laodicea
on the Lycus, as happens to be registered by his letter 'to the council and people
of the Astypalaeans. I received your embassy through which you greeted me as
I was arriving just now in Caria and Petronius Heraco gave me your letter.'
Hadrian's reply is dated 'five days before the Kalends' - the missing month's
name may be restored as July. One would expect that Antonius Polemo, who
after all came from Laodicea even if he had made Smyrna his home, would
have been on hand at this stage. The presence of the Guard tribune Statius
Macedo, kinsman of the Caesernii brothers, is attested at nearby Colossae,
where he dedicated a statue to Hadrian. Perhaps part of the retinue or escort was
quartered there - others may well have been at Hierapolis. A visit to the famous
Plutonium with its sulphurous springs may be postulated - and Hierapolis was,
after all, the birthplace of Epictetus. 24
A month or so later, on 23 July, Hadrian was at Phrygian Apamea, formerly
Celaenae, where the Persians had once had a royal hunting-park. Here on that
day in 129 Hadrian received an embassy, according to an inscription long
known but still unpublished. It refers, apparently, to the Pamphylians, and it
might be that they had hoped for a visit. If so they probably had to wait. For
one thing, it is likely that Hadrian was intent on hunting. At some time, it seems
clear, and the journey of 129 seems more plausible than an earlier year, he and
Antinous hunted wild boar together. There were also other things to attend to
in the area. At some point in his reign Hadrian had the tomb of Alcibiades
restored - it was a favourite occupation of his to refurbish the memory of the
famous dead. It does not necessarily mean that he was there in person - but if
he was, there is no better moment to fit in a visit. It would have meant a detour
to the north from Apamea, for the place where Alcibiades was murdered and
buried, the village of Melissa, was in northern Phrygia. Hadrian's chamberlain
Alcibiades might have proposed the visit, because of his name. But there
was another good reason for a northward trip: to inspect the Phrygian marble
quarries around Synnada and Docimium. Other considerations aside, Hadrian
had decided to donate a hundred columns of Phrygian marble for the embellish-
ment of one of his great new buildings at Athens. Once he was in the marble
area, it was not far to Melissa. Julius Severus may have been with him: he is
attested in his official capacity in this part of the province, at Dorylaeum.
Hadrian's visit to Phrygia is guaranteed by the two coin issues, which register
his arrival (adventui Aug Phrygiae) and call him the 'restorer' of the region
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{restitutori Phrygiae), which was not, indeed, a province, but had been an ancient
kingdom. Phrygia herself is shown wearing the traditional cap of her people, a
short tunic with cloak over it, and trousers, and holds in one hand a curved
shepherd's stick. 25
Whether or not Hadrian made this slight detour in summer 129, his route
from Phrygia lay eastwards. It may be supposed that he went to Antioch 'towards
Pisidia, the most successful of the veteran colonies planted by Augustus in
southern Asia Minor. From there he probably moved along the Augustan road,
the Via Sebaste, via Pappa-Tiberiopolis, to Iconium. But the existence of yet
another city calling itself Hadrianopolis well to the north of the Sebaste might
suggest that he diverged from the main road. Furthermore, there were extensive
imperial estates in the area - which belonged to the province of Galatia.
They might have been worth inspecting. After Iconium, the imperial party will
have proceeded into Cappadocia. A stay at Archelais seems highly plausible,
once the capital of a Hittite kingdom. Formerly called Garsaura, it was
refounded and named after himself by the last king of Cappadocia, and had
by now been for many decades a Roman colonia. It cannot be coincidence that
precisely in 129 the governor of Cappadocia had the 'shrines reconstructed for
Hadrian' at Archelais - at the expense of the priests; the Ilviri and quaestor
of the colony supervised the work. As for the governor, this was a coeval of
Hadrian, Rosianus Geminus, who had been Pliny's quaestor nearly thirty years
before. Rosianus' son-in-law, Pactumeius Clemens, had already attracted
Hadrian's attention and was probably at this very time busy with a special
mission in Greece. 26
The narrative section of the HA biography, becoming ever more condensed
at this point and about to break off abruptly - for some six years - after curt
mention of an event of autumn 130 in Egypt, happens to report the stay in
Cappadocia. A reference to Hadrian's 'tour of Asia, consecrating temples to him-
self, is followed by the sentence 'then he received slaves from the Cappadocians
for service castris. The last word has generally been rendered 'in the camp' or
'in the army'. This seems a little puzzling. It makes better sense when it is
recalled that castra can also refer to the household of the imperator. In other
words, the slaves in question were to join the familia Caesaris. Cappadocia had
long been a great exporter of slaves, renowned, for example, for its temple-states
such as Comana with thousands of hieroduli, servile retainers, of the goddess
Ma. The poet Horace had once mocked the king of the Cappadocians, master
of so many slaves but still short of cash. After it became a Roman province
the land continued to furnish slaves for Rome. Cappadocian slaves had a high
reputation as bakers. The needs of Hadrian's travelling household were perhaps
now catered for better. It may be that the opportunity was also taken to improve
the mobility of the court by stocking up with another celebrated Cappadocian
product, horses. 27
What else Hadrian may have done in Cappadocia this time is a matter for
guesswork. His coins later celebrated both the province and its garrison. O n the
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exercitus Cappadocicus issue Hadrian is shown on horseback addressing the
troops, which he probably did in 129 and had certainly done already in 123.
The personified province of the other issue is shown standing, wearing a short
military tunic with a chlamys made from an animal-skin over it, and high
hunting-boots. O n her head is a turreted crown; in her left hand she holds a flag
(vexillum), in the other a mountain. This should be Mount Argaeus, at the foot
of which lay Caesarea, the old royal capital of Archelaus, whose own coinage had
the same motif. The turreted crown alludes, it has been suggested, to the Greek
or hellenised cities of the province. It may be that one of these, Area, now became
a Roman colonia. If so, it would be very much in line with imperial practice
elsewhere: frontier provinces in the north and west of the empire gradually
acquired cities of this status equal in number to the legions of their garrison. The
recruiting needs of the citizen units were thus provided for locally, one colonia for
each legion. Area lay close to the legionary fortress Melitene. 28
The HA, the sole source, does not specify where Hadrian held his second
'durbar' for the eastern princes. It has often been assumed that it was at Satala,
but there is no reason to suppose that he went so far north this time. Alternatives
might be Melitene, the fortress of XII Fulminata, or Samosata, the old royal
capital of Commagene and now part of the province Syria. Which client rulers
attended the gathering can be determined partly from the HA and partly from
indications in Arrian. He lists four petty rulers recognised by Hadrian, who may
have received regalia from him on this occasion if not in 123: Malassas of the
Lazi, Rhezmegas of the Abasci, Spadagas of the Sanigae and Stachemphax of
the Zilchi. Anchialus, ruler of the Heniochi and Machelones, and Julianus
of the Apsilae, both long-serving clients of Rome who had been recognised by
Trajan fifteen years earlier, may have paid their respects. It seems likely that the
king of Armenia (whose name is not certainly known) would have turned up
too, but the Parthian king certainly did not. Vologaeses III, who had finally rid
himself of Chosroes, had other things to think about - and Hadrian kept
the royal throne that Chosroes had been promised. There may, indeed, already
have been another rival to distract and weaken Vologaeses. At any rate, Mannus,
or Ma'nu, ruler of Osrhoene, just across the Euphrates from Roman Syria,
should have had no difficulty in attending personally. More distant potentates
probably sent envoys. Mithridates of Mesene, Rome's client on the shores of the
Persian Gulf, is a case in point. Finally, a later passage in the HA refers to
the 'kings of the Bactrians' sending envoys to Hadrian. This may refer to the
great Kushan ruler Kanishka, whose reign in the distant Oxus region had just
begun (according to a still disputed chronology). 29
There were two notable absentees, whose failure to attend is stressed in the
HA: the rulers of the kingdoms in the Caucasus, of the Iberi (Georgia) and
Albani (Azerbaijan), 'scorned to come and see him'. T h e latter is not named, but
the Iberian king is a known figure, Pharasmanes II. The HA three times singles
out Pharasmanes' conduct towards Hadrian. 'When some kings came to
Hadrian', the first passage goes, 'he acted in such a way that those who had not
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been willing to come regretted it, especially in the case of Pharasmanes.' Later
on, it is stated that
on many kings he conferred a great deal, but from most of them he

actually purchased peace; by not a few he was despised, but to many he
gave huge favours - to none more than to the king of the Iberi, to whom
he presented an elephant and a fifty-man 'cohort 5 as well as magnificent
gifts.
Pharasmanes later reciprocated, but by then relations between Rome and Iberia
had seriously deteriorated, as Dio informs us. Finally, in the biography of
Hadrian's successor the HA reports that Pharasmanes showed greater respect to
Antoninus than he had to Hadrian. 30
The hostile comment in the HA, that Hadrian had 'purchased peace' from
the eastern rulers, is echoed in the Epitome de Caesaribus - surely deriving from
the same source, Marius Maximus' Life of Hadrian: 'Having obtained peace
from many kings by means of secret gifts, he used to boast openly that he had
achieved more in peacetime than others by warfare.' The judgement recalls
Tacitus' account of Germanicus' recall from Germany by Tiberius in AD 16. He
himself, Tiberius is supposed to have told his adopted son, had been sent to
Germany by Augustus nine times - and 'had achieved more by diplomacy than
by force' (plura consilio quam vi perfecisse) . 31
Hadrian will no doubt have received, in Syria as in other provinces,
delegations from the provincial councils. They would have had the opportunity
to express views on the conduct of Roman officials. It seems that there was
criticism. At any rate, there is a further unfriendly remark in the HA regarding
Hadrian's tour of Asia Minor in 129: As he went round the provinces, he
inflicted punishments on procurators and governors in accordance with their
conduct. Such was his severity that he was believed to have been inciting the
accusers personally.' N o names or details are offered. One is left to guess that,
for example, an outgoing governor of Syria or of Cilicia may have been accused
of malpractice, that one or more financial procurators were convicted of
corruption. The legate of Galatia at the time Hadrian passed through the
province, Trebius Sergianus, can hardly have been one of them - he became
consul ordinarius in 132 - and Rosianus Geminus continued to enjoy favour.
Syria probably received a new governor at this time, Publicius Marcellus, whose
home was Aquileia, a rather senior ex-consul (he had held the fasces in 120). It
looks as if two of the three legionary commanders were also newly installed
at the time of Hadrian's visit, C. Julius Severus of Ancyra for IV Scythica and
Eurycles Herculanus of Sparta for III Gallica. 32
Antioch on the Orontes, the greatest city in the region, had begun striking
coins again in anticipation of Hadrian's arrival - a good deal of extra small
change would be needed when the imperial retinue was in residence. The coins
proclaimed Antioch's rank of metropolis, mother-city, of Syria. The HA claims
that Hadrian actually intended to diminish this role and had even had plans to
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split the Syrian province 'so that Antioch would not be called the metropolis of
so many cities.' It is clear that the author - or his source, Marius Maximus - has
misunderstood or deliberately distorted what Hadrian actually did. Syria was
indeed subdivided into two provinces nearly seventy years later, by Septimius
Severus, after it had supported his rival Niger in the civil war of 193-4 (and
Antioch itself was also penalised). What happened in 129-30 was quite differ-
ent. The title metropolis of a province, in Syria as elsewhere, had been jealously
reserved up till now for a single city. Under Hadrian the 'rule' was relaxed. Three
other cities, each the 'capital' of a distinct region, were also granted the title:
Tyre, Damascus and Samosata. Marius Maximus perhaps assumed that
Hadrian's measure was motivated by the same ill-feeling towards Antioch which
he knew Severus to have harboured. Yet Hadrian's benefactions to Antioch are
well-attested. Even if no later coin issue commemorated Hadrian's visits to Syria,
coins were struck depicting - if not naming - the guardian spirit (Tyche) of
Antioch.33
The emergence of Antioch's 'rivals' as new metropoleis is attested by the coinage
of Damascus and Samosata. For Tyre - which had already called herself metro-
polis, in a different sense, as the mother-city of Phoenician colonies all over the
Mediterranean - there happens to be a notice in the Byzantine encyclopaedia, the
Suda, about a certain Paulus of Tyre, 'a rhetor in the time of Philo of Byblus;
under the Emperor Hadrian he went on an embassy and made Tyre a metropolis.'
The people of Tyre and the other ancient cities of Phoenicia had been reminded
of their heritage at this very time by the man associated with Paulus in this
passage. Philo of Byblus was the author - or rather, as he claimed, the translator
into Greek - of The Phoenician History of Sanchuniathon, supposedly written
before the Trojan war. Philo also wrote several other works, including one on The
Selection and Acquisition of Books, and others on Cities and Famous Men They
Produced and The Reign ofHadrian.54
Philo had a Roman patron, the senator Herennius Severus, once a corre-
spondent of Pliny, who called him 'very learned'. Philo introduced to Herennius
his pupil Hermippus of Berytus (Beirut), author of a book on dreams. The Suda
records that 'Herennius was consul when Philo was 78 years old', giving the
date as the 220th Olympiad, equivalent to the years 101-4. That can hardly be
accurate: Philo would have been practically a centenarian by the time he could
have written on Hadrian's reign. If '220' could be emended to '227', equivalent
to 129-32, a plausible year for Herennius' consulship would be precisely 129.
A pair of suffect consuls from this time, Severus and Arrianus, might then be
two persons of cultured disposition, Philo's patron and Hadrian's friend Flavius
Arrianus.35
As for Paulus of Tyre, he is known from another source, one of the subversive
propaganda tracts emanating from Alexandria in Egypt and misleadingly called
the Acts of the Pagan Martyrs. These pieces purport to record hearings, before a
succession of emperors, of disputes between Greeks and Jews. Their consistent
theme is the alleged pro-Jewish policy of Rome, with victimisation of prominent
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Alexandrian Greeks as a corollary. A papyrus from Oxyrhyncus which describes
a hearing before Trajan lists among the Greek delegates 'Paulus the Tyrian, who
offered his services as advocate for the Alexandrians'. Paulus may even have
appeared for the Alexandrians a second time, before Hadrian himself, in
119. Whether, as ambassador for the Tyrians before the Emperor in 129, this
man had the chance of airing his anti-semitic views cannot of course be known.
But it is likely enough that Hadrian met the sage of Byblus too; he would have
certainly inspected his literary productions - and the Phoenician History displays
a certain hostility to the Jews. 36
Paulus would no doubt have found a welcome from one prominent member
of the imperial entourage. Julia Balbilla, the bosom friend of the Empress, was
the granddaughter, on her mother's side, of the celebrated astrologer Claudius
Balbillus. Long ago Balbillus too had represented the Alexandrian Greeks against
the Jews of that city, in a hearing before Claudius Caesar. He had gone on to be
Prefect of Egypt under Nero. The opinions of Balbillus' granddaughter about
the Jews are of course a matter of conjecture. Still, it is relevant to notice that
her father Antiochus, the prince of Commagene, had once been betrothed to a
Jewish princess, Drusilla, the beautiful daughter of Herod Agrippa. The
engagement had been broken off: the bridegroom balked at conversion to
Drusilla's religion, which would have involved circumcision. Furthermore,
Balbilla's father, like her grandfather King Antiochus of Commagene and her
brother the Roman consul and honorary Athenian Philopappus, had proudly
borne the names 'King Antiochus Epiphanes'. 37
The influence on Hadrian's thinking of the first and most famous bearer of
that name, Antiochus IV Epiphanes of Syria, had already been seen at Athens. It
had, after all, been that king who had revived and gone a long way to completing
the construction of the Olympieion. He too, like Hadrian, had promoted the
cult of Zeus Olympios. There are various other aspects of the character and
policies of the eccentric monarch which find an echo in Hadrian, of whom he
seems to be almost a mirror image. In his long years as a hostage the Seleucid
prince had acquired a fervent admiration for Roman ways. His behaviour at
Antioch, mingling with the common people like a would-be civilis princeps,
recalls Hadrian the plebis iactantissimus amator. Antiochus was also, at least in his
latter years - and notwithstanding his promotion of Zeus Olympios - a devotee
of Epicureanism. 38
Whatever impact these various features of Antiochus may have had on
Hadrian - and, considering the length of time he spent altogether at Antioch,
he must have had ample opportunity for finding out about them - Antiochus
Epiphanes was remembered not least for his Jewish policy, which had provoked
the uprising of the Maccabees. There was considerable debate in antiquity
over the circumstances and course of events which led to the emergence of an
independent Jewish state. One thing is undisputed: the Temple at Jerusalem was
desecrated by the 'abomination of desolation'. An altar to Olympian Zeus
was set up in the Temple court and circumcision was strictly prohibited under
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pain of death. This assault on the Jewish religion had indeed been preceded by
active Hellenising on the part of the Jewish leadership. They had 'petitioned the
king to let them build a gymnasium in Jerusalem. And when he had granted
this, they also concealed the circumcision of their private parts in order to be
Greeks even when naked', as Josephus put it, paraphrasing the First Book of
Maccabees and spelling out an important aspect of what had gone on. 39
Whether or not Antiochus had really ordered his extreme measures in 'an
attempt to wipe out their superstition and introduce Greek practices, in order
to change that most repulsive people for the better', as Tacitus put it in the
Histories, the odds are that Hadrian believed this version. There were certainly
some Jews in Judaea at this time who had tried to reverse the effects of circum-
cision by the process known as epispasmos, no doubt so that they could exercise
naked in the Greek gymnasia without attracting adverse comment. Hadrian was
certainly making plans for Judaea on this tour. In particular, he had decided to
rebuild Jerusalem, left in ruins since its destruction by Titus in 70, and to create
in its place a Roman colonia. The HA, which does not register this fact, instead
places immediately after its account of the policy change over metropoleis in Syria
the statement that 'at this time, too, the Jews stirred up a war because they were
forbidden to mutilate their genitals.' 40
The harsh and hostile language probably reproduces the phrasing of an
imperial edict. In Greek the word used was presumably katatemnein - a
deliberate variant of the normal peritemnein. As it happens, a renegade Jew, Paul
of Tarsus, had once explicitly chosen to call circumcision katatome, 'mutilation,
instead of peritome, in his Letter to the Philippians. Writing to the Galatians, Paul
had gone further: 'these agitators', who insisted on circumcision, had better 'cut
themselves off - in other words, castrate themselves. In fact, the new Hadrianic
prohibition - which was universal, not confined merely to the Jews - did indeed
put circumcision under the same penalty as castration: death. The practice had
already been banned by Domitian and Nerva. Hadrian made castration subject
to Sulla's law on murder, the lex Cornelia de sicariis et veneficis. He can only be
supposed to have been unaware what the reaction would be, to have been led to
believe that Jewish resistance to Hellenisation had now melted away. There were,
indeed, signs of this. Sepphoris in Galilee, which had still been predominantly
Jewish at the time of the First Revolt - although it took the Roman side
- acquired a new name at about this time, Diocaesarea, the first part referring
to Zeus, the second to the Emperor. 41
Tacitus, in his brief report of Antiochus' abortive attempt to 'civilise' the Jews,
adds that the king had been prevented from carrying the policy through by a war
with the Parthians. Hadrian, who in all likelihood proclaimed his new policy
from Antiochus' capital, could be confident that he would face no danger from
that quarter. Vologaeses already had problems with a new rival. It might indeed
be questioned whether he needed a precedent or an inspiration from the
Seleucids. Nor need one invoke the conjectural influence of anti-semites such
as Paulus of Tyre and his circle. One could also discount the small but not
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insignificant group of senators of Jewish descent whose families had long since
abandoned their ancestral religion - men like Julius Alexander Berenicianus,
soon to be proconsul of Asia, or Julius Alexander Julianus, who had been legate
of Arabia a few years earlier. Although Hadrian had been perceived at least by
some Jews in a favourable light at the start of the reign, the main reason was no
doubt that he had disposed of the hated Lusius Quietus. His real feelings about
the Jews had probably been uninterruptedly hostile at least from the time of their
uprising in 116. The havoc and destruction that they had created in the
Cyrenaica, in Egypt and in Cyprus, not to mention their aid to the Parthians in
Mesopotamia, would surely have had a lasting impact on Hadrians thinking.42
There is no need to suppose that Hadrian remained at Antioch itself
throughout the winter of 129-30. He may well have gone to and fro, returning
there each time, but there is no firm information about other places he might
have visited in Syria - except for an ascent of Mount Casius and a trip to
Palmyra. The former may have come at the end of his stay in northern Syria -
it is mentioned by the HA just after the ban on circumcision. The mountain lay
on the south side of the River Orontes near its mouth, opposite the port of
Seleucia in Pieria. Hadrian climbed it in the small hours, to see the sunrise.
A storm was blowing up. As he sacrificed at the summit, the heavens opened
and a thunderbolt blasted both sacrificial victim and attendant. Hadrian was
unscathed and no doubt took it as a good omen, perhaps as a confirmation of
the dream he had had thirteen years before. The night before he became
Emperor, Dio relates, he dreamed that lightning struck him from a clear sky,
first on the right side of his throat and then on the left - but he was neither
frightened nor injured. The story was probably told in his autobiography.43
There is just a hint that Hadrian may have visited Berytus (Beirut), which
was after all the sole Latin community in the region, up to this moment, at any
rate, the only colonia of the traditional kind, in other words a settlement for
veteran legionaries. With plans of his own for another such foundation, Hadrian
may have had a particular wish to inspect the colonia Julia Augusta Felix. At any
rate, he had occasion to refer to Berytus in a speech, the jurist Ulpian reports,
in which he called it Augustana colonia (quite what the term implies is not clear).
Heliopolis (Baalbek) in the hinterland, with its celebrated temple, still part of
the territory of Berytus, was surely likely to attract the imperial tourist. There
is no direct evidence for his presence, but a local dignitary, with a splendid set
of authentically 'colonial' names, M. Licinius Pompenna Potitus Urban us, was
'granted the public horse' by Hadrian, in other words received the status of
Roman knight.44
If Berytus was still a Latin island in a by now largely Greek-speaking world, the
remaining Syrian city Hadrian visited was virtually the only place where the
native language, a form of Aramaic, was still in public use. Palmyra, the great
oasis trading city, may indeed have still been technically outside the empire, a
client-state, even if long since under the close supervision of the governors of
Syria. Hadrian's presence there is firmly attested by an inscription, in Palmyrene
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and Greek, in honour of a prominent citizen, Males, 'also called Agrippa. While
holding office 'during the stay in the city of the God Hadrian, he provided olive
oil both for visitors and for the Palmyrenes and contributed to the reception
of the soldiers/ Coin-like tokens portraying Sabina found at Palmyra point
strongly to her presence with Hadrian. Tourism aside, Palmyra was a key factor
in Rome's relations with the states on her eastern borders. The free city had
grown wealthy by trade with Parthia and through Parthia with the far east. Some
of its citizens were in the service of the king of Mesene, still a Roman client-state,
at the head of the Persian Gulf. Not long after Hadrians visit, a Palmyrene
actually dedicated a temple to 'the Augusti' at the Parthian city of Vologesias.45
After the imperial party left Syria the next stage of the itinerary probably
took Hadrian first to Arabia before Judaea. The former Nabataean kingdom,
peacefully annexed just over twenty years earlier but still often called 'the new
province', had a garrison of one legion, at Bostra, the commander being at the
same time governor. Hadrian may have installed a new man at this time, one of
his favourites, the younger Haterius Nepos. The previous incumbent, Aninius
Sextius Florentinus, had died at his post and was buried in a magnificent tomb
at Petra. Hadrian's presence is not directly attested at Bostra, but he was certainly
at Gerasa, also in the north of the province. His Horse Guards had been
quartered there for the winter. Eight members of one of the turmae dedicated
an altar to Deania 'at Antiochia on the Chrysorhoa which is also Gerasa, the
holy, inviolate and autonomous city', for the welfare of Hadrian. Their acting
commander, praepositus, is named, M. Calventius Viator, centurion of the legion
V Macedonica. Viator had probably been with Hadrian commanding the escort
of equites singulares Augusti at least since the tour of Africa in 128. To celebrate
Hadrians arrival Gerasa erected a ceremonial arch with a triumphal statue
above. Hadrian held audience here and sat in judgement. Several other statues
commemorated the visit.46
Petra far to the south was the metropolis of the province and the 'rose-red city'
now took the name 'Hadriane'. It is probable enough that Hadrian went on
south from Gerasa, through Philadelphia (Amman) along the Via Traiana and
down the east side of the Dead Sea. Two coin issues, an adventus and a restitutor
type, later recalled the visit. The personified province is shown wearing a long
tunic {chiton) and cloak. On the restitutor coins a dromedary stands between
Arabia and Hadrian.47
Two sets of coins were also to commemorate Hadrian's visit to Judaea, one
simply showing the personified province, the other explicitly registering
Hadrian's advent. The figure of Judaea is much the same on both: a veiled
woman in standard Greco-Roman dress stands opposite the Emperor. With her,
exceptionally for this series of province-coins, are three small boys. Two of them
are shown offering palm-branches to Hadrian, while the third clings to his
mother's robe. On the province issue, Judaea is shown sacrificing - the victim,
a bull, lies beside the flaming altar. There is nothing here to suggest that Judaea
was any different from any of the other provinces depicted on these coins. Most
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HADRIANUS OLYMPIUS
Plate 24 Hadrian comes to Judaea

(BMClll Hadrian no. 1655)
of the adventus issues show an altar with a sacrificial bull. The only unusual
feature is the fact that the straightforward province issue also has the altar - and
the presence of the children. They indeed may allude to the foundation of the
new colonia at Jerusalem. Otherwise, the thoroughly Greek character of Judaea
on these coins gives the impression that it had become a Hellenised province
like any other in the east. The transformation of Galilean Sepphoris into
Diocaesarea which evidently took place at this time would have seemed to be a
harbinger of a general abandonment of Judaism. 48
The most plausible account of the foundation at Jerusalem is supplied in the
Byzantine monk Xiphilinus' abbreviation of Cassius Dio's History. At Jerusalem
he founded a city in place of the one which had been razed to the ground,
naming it Aelia Capitolina; and in place of the Temple of God he built another
temple, for Jupiter.' The brief statement is at once continued with an account
of the war which this action provoked, not at once, but when Hadrian had left
the region, Tor the Jews thought it a dreadful thing that foreign peoples should
be settled in their city and foreign religious rites established there.' Study of the
coinage has made it certain that the foundation was undertaken in 130, in the
course of Hadrian's visit. He may have been contemplating the step for some
time. There are indeed some curious stories, in both rabbinical and Christian
sources, that Hadrian had at some stage promised the Jews that he would
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allow their temple at Jerusalem to be rebuilt. The notion may go back to some
misunderstanding at the time when Hadrian's removal of Lusius Quietus - and
then his execution - won him temporary popularity with the Jews. 49
He was, indeed, in the mood for founding cities in 130, it might be said:
there seems little doubt that he had already made plans for the creation of a new
Greek polis in Egypt. He had founded a Hadrianutherae in the northern part of
the province Asia, in Mysia, where urban centres were thin on the ground. In
the Cyrenaica he had created a new city, also named after himself, to resettle
refugees who had been displaced in the Jewish revolt. He had, too, founded new
coloniae, in Africa and in Pannonia. But Roman colonies were few and far
between in the Greek east and none had been founded for veterans since the
time of Augustus. Perhaps his visit to Pisidian Antioch and other Augustan
foundations, including Berytus, had had an impact. There is, further, the point
that Judaea had had a garrison of two legions, at least since the end of Trajan's
reign. That might well make it seem sensible to create a second colonia, which,
together with Caesarea, could supply citizen recruits. Hadrian's new Jerusalem
was perhaps a little out of the ordinary, a colony next to a legionary base - for
X Fretensis had been based at or close to the ruined Jerusalem for over sixty
years. Still, at Bostra, and indeed in other eastern provinces, it was normal
enough for legions to be based in or on the edge of cities. 50
The names chosen for the new foundation hardly need emphasising: Aelia
after Hadrian, Capitolina after Jupiter - and, of course, this god was the Roman
equivalent of Olympian Zeus. Further, the Jews had been obliged, since the
destruction of their Temple, to pay their dues to Jupiter Capitolinus as a Jewish
tax. Now Jupiter was actually taking over from Jehovah. What stage the prepa-
rations for the rebuilding of Jerusalem had reached by the time of Hadrian's
arrival is quite unknown - except that considerable work had been going on in
the past few years on the road-network in the province. That may well have been
with a view to facilitating the transport of building-materials. One may suppose
that a founding ceremony took place with Hadrian's participation, the driving
of a furrow around the circuit of the new city's area. The new city's coinage,
already being minted within two years of Hadrian's visit, shows him personally
guiding the plough. The governor of the province will also have been at hand,
Q. Tineius Rufus. Whether he had just been appointed or had been there
already for a year or two is not known. Rufus had previously governed Thrace,
probably at the time of Hadrian's visit in 124, and had become consul in 127. 51
Dio explicitly states that Hadrian 'passed through Judaea into Egypt', coming
first to Pelusium, whereas the HA, in spite of mentioning the provocation of the
Jews by the circumcision ban, does not directly mention a visit to Judaea at all.
Instead, its version is that 'he travelled through Arabia and came to Pelusium'.
Dio's version seems to be correct, since independent evidence shows Hadrian
at Gaza, which was now in the province Judaea, in the summer of 130. Visits
to other places in the province must also be postulated. Caesarea, the residence
of the governor and a Roman colonia for sixty years, was probably his base. It
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acquired a temple in his honour - a Hadrianeum - and there was another at
Tiberias, said two hundred years later to be 'a very large temple'. Visits to other
parts are also plausible. The talmudic stories of his conversations with Jews,
including Rabbis, are no doubt largely imaginary, but it would have been in
character for Hadrian to have engaged in debate with leading local figures.
Thus Hadrian - cmay his bones rot!' (as virtually every reference to him in the
rabbinical literature adds) - is portrayed in the Talmud questioning Rabbi
Joshua b. Hanania, about the Sabbath, about Moses and about the Jewish deity.
In one anecdote Hadrian - 'may his bones rot!' - questions a centenarian
peasant whom he encountered planting a fig tree.52
A stay at Gaza is, at all events, undeniable. Hadrian surely went on from
Gaza along the coast into Egypt. Gaza began dating its coinage by a new
era beginning with Hadrian's arrival, which can be narrowed down to July.
A 'Hadrianic festival' was also founded there. The author of the HA, with
an itinerary taking Hadrian from Arabia into Egypt may just have been
muddled. But perhaps Hadrian made a detour to Petra on the last stage of the
journey to Egypt, rather than in the course of his tour of Arabia earlier in the
year. However this may be, in late July or early August 130, Hadrian entered
Egypt.53
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'Who does not know what monsters crazy Egypt worships' {qualia demens
Aegyptos portenta colaifi Not long before Hadrian arrived in the country, or
perhaps while he was there, Juvenal composed a ferocious satire about an
incident in Upper Egypt. Something appalling had happened, near Coptus,
'recently, in the consulship of Juncus', in other words in autumn 127. During
a religious festival the neighbouring communities of Ombos and Tentyra had
come to blows - they worshipped rival deities - which led to a bloody riot and
ended in cannibalism. Juvenal himself had been in Egypt, he is careful to stress:
'Egypt is crude, to be sure, yet the native rabble is just as prone to luxury, I have
observed, as the notorious Canopus/ It is difficult not to wonder whether the
old poet had not chosen to write up this gruesome travellers tale precisely
because Hadrian was in Egypt or on his way there. That Hadrian was heading
for Egypt had probably been known since he left Rome in 128 - the admittedly
muddled fourth-century writer Epiphanius even asserted that the whole journey
was to Egypt and was undertaken for the sake of his health.1
Hadrian approached by land, coming from Gaza, and one must assume that
as he crossed the provincial border with Judaea at Rhinocoloura he was received
by his Viceroy, the Prefect Flavius Titianus. So colourless are Titianus' names
that it is impossible to infer his origin - except that he was presumably
provincial and only a second generation citizen, if not son of an imperial freed-
man. But he had a solid career behind him, which included service in Asia
Minor, Rome and Gaul; and he had already been Prefect for four-and-a-half
years. How the Prefect was supposed to comport himself when the Emperor
was there is a question. As Viceroy the Prefect had to carry out many of the
functions of the Pharaoh; now the Pharaoh was there in person. Apart from
Octavian, not yet Augustus, in 30 BC, and Vespasian, who came to Egypt soon
after his proclamation, no Roman predecessor of Hadrian had ever been in
Egypt. At any rate, Titianus was approved of by Hadrian - he remained in office
for a further three years.2
The first record of Hadrian in Egypt is from Pelusium, where he restored the
tomb of Pompeius Magnus. This action is reported not only by Dio and the
HA, but in some detail by Appian, himself an Alexandrian. At the end of his
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MEDITERRANEAN
Pelusium /
FAYUM
Small Oasis
Oxyrhynchus,
Great Oasis
Map 7 Egypt
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account of Pompey's murder in 48 BC, Appian adds that his head was cut off
and kept for Caesar, and his body buried on the seashore in a modest tomb. In
the course of time this was covered with sand and the statues of Pompey which
his kinsfolk had erected had all been defaced and then removed to 'the inner
recess of the temple. But in my day the Roman emperor Hadrian searched for
and found them, during his visit there; and he cleared away the sand from the
tomb and made it conspicuous again, and re-erected Pompey's statues.' Appian
also mentions that 'someone' had composed an epigram for the tomb, which he
quotes:
'How mean a tomb for one so well-endowed with shrines.'
Curiously, Appian does not seem aware that it was Hadrian who composed the
verse, as duly reported by the Palatine Anthology, which includes the line as
Hadrian's, and by Dio: After this he went through Judaea into Egypt and offered
sacrifice to Pompeius, on whom he is said to have uttered this verse . . . and he
rebuilt the tomb, which was in ruins.' Appian's apparent ignorance may be
genuine: he had probably read the epigram - to which no author's name may
have been attached. The HA, which omits mention of the poem, simply says
that Hadrian 'rebuilt Pompey's tumulus m a more splendid way (magnificentiusY.
The action was very much characteristic of Hadrian: restoration of tombs,
with in some cases composition of verses to go on them, is attested for the
Homeric hero Ajax, for Epaminondas and for Alcibiades, among others. O n this
occasion he honoured the memory of a great Roman who had, as Appian else-
where put it, 'destroyed the Jews' greatest and to them holiest city, Jerusalem.'
That Hadrian should have done this just after launching the replacement of
this 'holiest city' by a thoroughly non-Jewish foundation was perhaps only
coincidence, brought about by his itinerary. The Jewish inhabitants of Judaea,
already seething with resentment, will have reacted with some bitterness.
Hadrian would not, however, encounter such hostility in Egypt. The events of
116-17 had effectively wiped out the Jewish presence in the country. 3
Hadrian's entry into Alexandria was already celebrated on the city coinage of
his fourteenth year, which ended on 28 August 130 - the Egyptian New Year
began on 1 Thoth, the equivalent of the Roman 29 August. He is portrayed
standing on a quadriga, with the personified Alexandria standing to greet
him. A later version a few years later shows him on a quadriga drawn by four
elephants. Whether or not he actually arrived in an elephant-drawn carriage, it
may at least be assumed that the date was no later than August 130. Hadrian's
intention was certainly to inspect the whole province, which meant to sail up
the Nile into Upper Egypt, indeed to go as far as the First Cataract and the
southern frontier of the empire just beyond it, at Philae. It is safe to infer also
that he came with plans to create a fourth fully-fledged Greek polis, alongside
Naucratis, Alexandria and Ptolemais, and thus to strengthen Hellenism in
Egypt. No doubt he had a general idea where this city should be established, but
he would wish to select the spot himself. However, the voyage on the great river
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could only begin when the Nile flood had receded: there was an ancient religious
taboo, of which the Romans were well aware, that the ruler of Egypt should not
sail on the Nile in flood.4
The Alexandrian coinage of his fifteenth year - and indeed of several
subsequent years - continued to depict the imperial adventus. Hadrian is shown
being greeted by the personified city, which in one example is kissing his hand,
in another offering him ears of corn; or he is shown sacrificing. Sabina too is
repeatedly portrayed, standing and sacrificing, or sitting on a throne. An issue
of the seventeenth year (132-3) has the great god Sarapis greeting the Emperor.
Further, his temple is shown, represented by two fluted columns supporting a
pediment on which an eagle perches. Inside the temple the Emperor is depicted,
a sceptre in his left hand, touching with his right hand a small shrine labelled
Hadrianon, on the other side of which Sarapis is portrayed, his right hand
raised in greeting, a sceptre in his left hand. Hadrian and Sarapis thus shared a
temple - which must be the mighty shrine at Alexandria, dominating the city
skyline on its massive platform, approached by a hundred or more steps. The
reconciliation of Rome and the Alexandrian Greeks was thus symbolically cele-
brated - for generations the Greeks had regarded the Roman emperors as biased
protectors of the large Jewish community in their city; an image of Sarapis had
gone with their envoys as a talisman to hearings at Rome. Now the Alexandrian
Jewish community had disappeared. Besides the two principal deities, the
Alexandrian coinage of these years shows a great variety of other gods, both
Greek - Zeus, Artemis, Athena, the Dioscuri - and Egyptian - Harpocrates and
the Nile - as well as personifications of Justice (Dikaiosyne) and Piety
(Eusebeia). 5
The imperial coinage struck at Rome would shortly commemorate most of
the provinces and regions that Hadrian visited and Egypt was no exception,
indeed was given particularly extensive treatment. Aegyptus is shown reclining
on the ground, leaning on a large basket filled with corn-ears and fruit. She
wears a long tunic and cloak and holds in her right hand a sistrum, the national
musical instrument which was the special attribute of the goddess Isis. An ibis
faces her. Exceptionally, not merely the figure of the province, but the city of
Alexandria and the god Nile are also celebrated - Alexandria is the only city,
apart from Nicomedia, that was honoured by this coin series. Nilus is shown
as a heavily bearded old man with a garland of reeds, with hippopotamus or
crocodile, and with children: these were evidently a symbolic representation of
the sixteen cubits' rise of the river, on which Egypt's prodigious fertility
depended. The god was normally shown on every issue at Alexandria. In
Hadrian's fourteenth and fifteenth years he does not appear, which has led to the
inference that the Nile floods in 130 and 131 were disappointingly low.6
Alexandria appears on the coins in various guises, both standing and
reclining with one arm on a basket of fruit, not unlike the figure of Aegyptus.
She is also depicted on coins specifically celebrating the imperial arrival,
adventui Aug. Alexandriae. O n some of these the personified city herself is
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Plate 25 Egypt (BMClll Hadrian no. 1703)
depicted, on others she is not shown at all. Instead Hadrian is shown clasping
hands with Sarapis; behind the Emperor stands Sabina, matched by Isis close
to Sarapis. Rome's reconciliation with the Greeks of Alexandria is once again
formally proclaimed. 7
Before the Nile floods abated sufficiently for the great voyage up-river to
begin, there was plenty for Hadrian and his party to do or simply to see at
Alexandria and in the Delta. He had presumably long since authorised expen-
diture for rebuilding after the Jewish uprising. For what it is worth, that is stated
by Jerome in his Chronicle under Hadrian's first year: 'Hadrian restored
Alexandria which had been destroyed by the Jews.' Some of the temples shown
on the Alexandrian coinage of Hadrian's eighteenth and nineteenth years
(133-5), for example of Nilus and of Isis, may have been additional buildings
begun during his visit - at any rate, one of the quarters of the city, which may
well have been an addition, was to be named after him. A standard goal for
prominent visitors was the Sema, the enclosure attached to the royal palaces,
where the tombs of Alexander the Great and the Ptolemies lay. Alexander's
mummified body had been placed by Ptolemy I in a gold tomb, which was later
replaced by one of glass. Octavian had inspected the body closely in 30 BC, had
indeed touched it, whereupon part of the nose broke off, Dio reports. The
sources do not explicitly record Hadrian's inspection. 8
Also attached to the palace-complex was another building which Hadrian
certainly did visit, the 'house of the Muses', Mouseion, as it is best called, rather
than the misleadingly latinised 'Museum'. This may be regarded as a Royal
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Academy of Arts and Sciences. It had 'a public walk, an exedra with seats and a
large house in which there is a common dining-hall for the men of learning
(philologi) who are Fellows of the Mouseion', as Strabo had described it a century
earlier. This institution of Ptolemy II, combined with the magnificent Royal
Library - the stocking of which had naturally been favoured by Egypt's produc-
tion of papyrus - was the pride of Alexandria. Membership of the Mouseion,
which carried with it free dining-rights, was a highly regarded privilege among
the intellectuals, not just of Alexandria itself. Hadrian is known to have
appointed several outsiders, including his friend Antonius Polemo and Dionysius
of Miletus. As Philostratus expressed it, in connection with the nomination of
Dionysius, 'he was enrolled among those who had free meals in the Mouseion
- by Mouseion I refer to a dining-table in Egypt, to which are invited the most
distinguished men from all over the world.' Perhaps Dionysius had joined the
imperial entourage, and would have the chance of enjoying his privilege in
person. The institution was supervised by an imperially appointed procurator.
Among known previous incumbents were the philosopher Chaeremon and his
pupil Dionysius, both Alexandrians, the astrologer Claudius Balbillus, later
Prefect of Egypt, and grandfather of Sabina's friend Balbilla - who was with the
imperial party - and Julius Vestinus, the Gallic intellectual who had subsequently
become Hadrian's ab epistulis?
The HA - no longer in the narrative section of the vita - refers to Hadrian
at the Mouseion in a single brief but revealing sentence: At the Museum in
Alexandria he posed numerous questions to the professors and, after posing
them, supplied the answers himself This was very much in the manner of the
polymath ruler, who prided himself on being able to outdo the experts in their
own fields. None of the 'professors' are named, but several of the Alexandrian
and other litterati, including one who was probably made a member during
Hadrian's stay, Pancrates, emerge in the course of the next few months in
Hadrian's vicinity, further the rhetor Numenius, and the Alexandrian poet
Dionysius 'the Periegete'. Other poets with the imperial party probably included
Hadrian's freedmen Mesomedes and Phlegon of Tralles, the imperial chronicler,
and, further, Paion of Side, who had links with Hadrian's other prominent freed-
man, who must have been there, the chamberlain Alcibiades. One should
also mention again Sabina's close friend Julia Balbilla, who was shortly to reveal
herself as an accomplished poetess, perhaps not the only one then in Egypt with
the imperial party. Last but by no means least, the ab epistulis Avidius
Heliodorus may properly be regarded as a man of letters; he was there, with his
wife.10
The visit to the intellectual centre of Alexandria may have been relished by
some of Hadrian's entourage. For Antinous, it may be supposed, other activities
would have had more appeal, in particular hunting. It would in any case have
been possible to infer from one of the reliefs - the tondi - which once adorned
a Hadrianic monument at Rome that Antinous had accompanied Hadrian on
a hunt which also left its traces in the literary record. Antinous, indeed, has
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DEATH IN THE NILE
been identified on all, or almost all, the eight tondi. O n one, which should be
chronologically almost the latest, he can be seen to have been with Hadrian on
his lion-hunt. The lion was a 'royal beast'. That Hadrian once killed a lion is
actually mentioned by the HA, and the event is depicted on a medallion. Besides
this, there is more detail in the Deipnosophistae by Athenaeus of Egyptian
Naucratis, an early third-century work cast in the form of a dialogue from the
year 192. According to a story told here, 'a huge creature had for a long time
ravaged the whole of Libya [i.e. the Cyrenaica], many parts of which this lion
had rendered uninhabitable.' 11
Athenaeus' account comes by way of explanation about an Egyptian poet
named Pan crates. He had composed a poem about the hunt from which
Athenaeus quotes a few lines. This episode in the Western Desert became better
known when further fragments of Pancrates' poem were found on papyrus. One
describes the party - including Antinous, mounted - assembling for the start of
the expedition. A longer fragment begins with a description of Antinous, on
horseback, awaiting the deadly lion with steel-shod spear in his hand. But it was
Hadrian who struck first, throwing his bronze-tipped spear - but deliberately
only wounding the beast,
for he wished to test the aim of the handsome Antinous, son of the Argus-
slayer [Hermes]. The stricken beast grew ever fiercer and tore at the
ground with his paws in his rage . . . he lunged at them both, lashing his
haunches and sides with his t a i l . . . his eyes flashing dreadful fire, his
ravening jaws foaming, his teeth gnashing, the hair bristling on his mighty
head and shaggy neck . . . He charged against the glorious god [Hadrian]
and Antinous, like Typhoeus of old against Zeus the slayer of giants.
The remaining, very damaged lines seem to refer to the lion mauling Antinous'
horse but then being struck a blow in the neck, evidently by Hadrian - who
would thus have saved Antinous - and, lying in the dust, being trampled by the
hooves of Antinous' mount. 1 2
The Rome tondo shows Hadrian and a young companion side by side, each
with a foot on a dead lion. If the figure at Hadrian's right hand is indeed
Antinous, he is portrayed very differently from the mass of other portraits which
have survived. O n this hunting relief he has no luxuriant curls, indeed an almost
military hair-style, and there are sideburns and down on his cheeks, the first
signs of a beard. In other words, he was no longer an adolescent, an ephebe, but
a young man, probably about twenty years old. It seems hardly possible that
Pancrates wrote his poem about the hunt straight after it took place; rather,
several months later, after further, dramatic events had intervened. It does, how-
ever, seem plausible that Hadrian met Pancrates not long after the hunt, not as
a poet but in another capacity.13
The desert adventure - it may be guessed - occupied a week or two in
September 130. Thereafter one can reconstruct Hadrians movements in outline
with some confidence over the next two months. His presence at a few places
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Plate 26 Hadrian's lion hunt

(tondo from a Hadrianic hunting monument, reused in the Arch of Constantine).
The figure on the left, whose left foot is on the lion's head, has been identified as
Antinous (although this is often denied). If it is Antinous, it shows him as he was
shortly before his death. Next to him, with his right foot on the lion's head,
stands Hadrian (his head recut to resemble Constantine)
on specific dates is firmly established and can be postulated with confidence

elsewhere, even if the timing is less clear. It may be assumed, for example, that
he was at the pleasure-resort of Canopus, called 'notorious for its luxury by
Juvenal, 15 miles (24 km) east of Alexandria. There was, to be sure, a great
temple of Sarapis there, known for its oracles and dream-cures. This may have
had some appeal. But Canopus was mainly renowned for
the crowds of revellers who go down from Alexandria by the canal to the
public festivals. Night and day there are throngs of people on the boats,
playing the flute and dancing unrestrainedly, in fact with extreme licen-
tiousness, men and women alike - and the people of Canopus itself have
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establishments along the canal well-suited for this kind of relaxation and
entertainment.
This is the description of the geographer Strabo. That Hadrian was at Canopus
and retained favourable recollections of it is an inference from an item in the
HA. His great Villa at Tibur had among the areas named after famous places
one called 'Canopus' - the only reminder of Egypt which the biographer
mentions. Canopus was a likely enough place from which the great journey up
the Nile would have begun. A little over a hundred years earlier, as Tacitus
reports in the Annals, Germanicus Caesar set off from this town, supposedly
'founded by the Spartans in memory of Menelaus' helmsman Canopus, who was
buried there', for his voyage up-river to Thebes and thence to Elephantine and
Syene, 'once the gateways of the Roman empire'. 14
O n the way to Canopus, if not, rather, on a special visit, it must be assumed
that Hadrian was at Nicopolis, where Egypt's legionary garrison was quartered.
The fortress close to Alexandria had long housed two legions and indeed there
had for a time in the early principate been a third in the province. It seems that
there were still two at Nicopolis, one of which, XXII Deiotariana, had been
based in Egypt throughout the century and a half of its existence. Its partner, II
Traiana, by contrast, first created thirty years before, had only just arrived in
Egypt a year or two earlier. Lucius Macedo, tribune of the Praetorian Guard and
with Hadrian as commander of his escort, after promotion to the rank of
primuspilus iterum, 'chief centurion a second time', became commanding prefect
of II Traiana: perhaps he was installed by Hadrian in person. 15
Hadrian may have sailed on a specially constructed ship, but he would have
been escorted by vessels of the classis Alexandrina. As it happens, a commander
of the fleet under Hadrian, L. Valerius Proculus, who probably came from
Malaca (Malaga) in Baetica, refers to his post as 'Prefect of the Alexandrian fleet
- and of the river patrol [potamophylacid)\ as if to emphasise an extra duty. He
was probably in office at the time of Hadrian's voyage on the Nile, which should
have begun on the Canopic arm. The first stop upstream would be Naucratis,
the earliest Greek settlement in Egypt. Its earliest history went back nearly
eight hundred years, when the Milesians had established it as a trading-post in
the seventh century BC. The Pharaoh Amasis had fostered the enlargement
of the town in the next century. At least twelve cities, Dorian and Aeolian as
well as Ionian, had joined in the creation of the new polis. Such a 'Panhellenic'
foundation must have been attractive to Hadrian, eagerly looking forward to the
inauguration of his Panhellenion, now less than two years ahead. Furthermore,
the polis which Hadrian himself was to found in Egypt would be given a
constitution based on that of Naucratis. 16
The next place to the south where there is evidence of a sort for Hadrian's
presence is Heliopolis, as the Greeks called it, originally the city of a local
sun-god, Atum, soon identified with Re, then with Horus, and worshipped
there as Re-Harachte. The famous temple, the House of Re, had had a priestly
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school visited by Herodotus and at which Plato and the mathematician Eudoxus
of Cnidus were supposed to have studied. Strabo wrote that the city was com-
pletely deserted in his day. The settlement of 'priests who studied philosophy
and astronomy' had disappeared, but there were still priests 'who performed the
sacrifices and explained the sacred rites to foreigners.' Further, a papyrus gives
'an extract from the spells in the holy book found in the sanctuary at Heliopolis,
called the book of Hermes, written in the Egyptian language and translated into
Greek'. 17
Hadrian, with his insatiable curiosity, and perhaps with some other motive,
evidently wished to learn some of the secret lore. Another papyrus, the great
'magical papyrus' now in Paris, tells of a 'spell of attraction', which 'attracts those
who are uncontrollable . . . it inflicts sickness excellently and destroys power-
fully, sends dreams beautifully and accomplishes marvellous dream revelations.'
The text goes on to claim that Hadrian witnessed a demonstration.
The prophet of Heliopolis, Pachrates, revealing the power of his own

divine magic, demonstrated it to the Emperor Hadrian: for he attracted
within one hour, made someone sick within two hours, killed within seven
hours, and sent the Emperor himself dreams. Thus the prophet proved
the complete truth of his magical powers. The Emperor marvelled at the
prophet and ordered that he should receive a double fee.
The 'prophet Pachrates' was unquestionably a real and well-known figure. A

generation later the satirist Lucian produced a caricatured portrayal in his essay
Philopseudes, 'The Lover of Lies'. One Eucrates tells how he was sailing up the
Nile and happened to meet 'a man from Memphis, one of the temple scribes
(Joierogrammateis), a remarkably wise man who knew all the teaching of the
Egyptians'. He was supposed to have 'lived underground for twenty-three years,
learning magic from Isis'. One of the other characters in Lucian's story at once
recognises from the description his 'own teacher Pancrates, a holy man, with
shaven head, clad in white in linen, speaking Greek with an accent, tall, flat-
nosed, with thick lips and thin legs'. The shaven head, white linen clothes
and emaciated legs were the typical features of the ascetic Egyptian priest. At
this point Lucian takes off into the realm of fantasy, with Pancrates riding on
crocodiles and then teaching his pupil some but not all of his spells - which
resulted in Eucrates becoming the original of the Sorcerer's Apprentice. 18
Remarkably enough, the same figure who met Hadrian in his capacity as
'prophet' seems to recur as the poet Pancrates, whose celebration of the lion-
hunt has been quoted and who was to win further approval from Hadrian.
There is no difficulty about the slight difference in name between the 'Pachrates'
of the magical papyrus and 'Pancrates' in Lucian and Athenaeus. The former is
an adaptation of a purely Egyptian name which sounded slightly similar, the
latter is a 'corrected', more Hellenic version. Even if, as Lucian claimed, the man
spoke Greek with an accent, there is no reason why he should not have been
capable of writing passable Greek verse. As it happens, Athenaeus quotes from
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another work of Pancrates, the Bocchoreis, to illustrate the use of something
called a kondy, 2, magical globe, 'from which magic wonders and profitable signs
sent by the gods appear on the earth'. This directly links the poet with the prac-
tice of magic. One may speculate that his poem about the hunt had procured
him an audience with the Emperor, at which he invited him to a demonstration
of magical powers. Equally, of course, Hadrian might have sought out
the 'prophet' first - for whatever purpose, but particularly perhaps if he was
concerned about his own health - and this could subsequently have led to the
poem. 19
Hadrian may indeed have had other reasons for seeking enlightenment at
Heliopolis. It was traditionally the home of the Phoenix, the legendary bird that
had allegedly been sighted at the time of his accession, marking the beginning
of a new era. There were very varied views on the life-span of the Phoenix. One
put it at 1,460 years, the length of the so-called 'Sothic cycle'. Sothis was the
Egyptian name for Sirius, the dog-star. The heliacal rising of Sirius was supposed
to coincide with the Egyptian New Year's day, I Thoth (29 August), but in fact
did so only every 1,460 years. According to the third-century writer Censorinus,
this coincidence occurred precisely in the year 139. Hadrian must have been
well-informed about the coming event. Indeed, if one will, the proclamation of
the Phoenix might be interpreted as merely an advance signal of what was soon
to occur. Hadrian's construction of a massive temple of Roma and Venus and
establishment of a festival for Rome's birthday on 21 April, likewise suggests that
he intended, well in advance, to attune people's minds to the coming 900th
anniversary of Rome's foundation, due in 148. 20
Ahead of Hadrian and his party, only a few miles upstream from Heliopolis,
lay some of Egypt's principal tourist attractions: Memphis, the 3,000-year-old
original capital city of the Pharaohs, the pyramids, the Great Sphinx and the
Labyrinth. No firm trace of Hadrian's presence survives at these places. That
there was a temple of Hadrian at Memphis need not mean that he was there in
person when it was founded - and in any case, it was probably there from soon
after his accession; most places of any size would have had such a temple.
Memphis had, at any rate, attracted imperial attention eight years earlier, just
after Hadrian had left Britain, when he received urgent news about troubles over
Apis. This was the sacred bull, variously identified as the son of Ptah or of Osiris
or indeed as Osiris himself. Hadrian may be assumed to have inspected the
animal about which there had been so much trouble. Each bull was ritually
buried in the great Memphis Serapeum, the shrine of the original Egyptian
Sarapis - Osiris-Apis or Osor-Hapi - from which Ptolemy I had derived inspira-
tion for his new Greco-Egyptian deity. If Hadrian was concerned about his
health, he might also have wanted to visit the Memphite temple of Imhotep,
identified by the Greeks with Asclepius. Its priests were renowned for their skill
in magic and alchemy. It must be recalled that Pachrates/Pancrates was associated
by Lucian with Memphis rather than Heliopolis. There is no reason why he
could not have held office as hierogrammateus at Memphis, and indeed his
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'demonstration' to Hadrian could have taken place there, rather than at
Heliopolis, which the papyrus may have named simply as his place of origin. 21
If Hadrian left no trace of his presence at the pyramids, there is strong
evidence that a high-ranking Roman woman from his party was there and
climbed up the Great Pyramid of Cheops. She composed a six-line poem in
Latin hexameters, which was carved on it:
I have seen the pyramids without you, sweetest brother, and for you, as
best I could, I have sadly shed my tears here and I carve my lament as a
memorial of my grief. May there thus stand out from the tall pyramid the
name of Decimus Gentianus, who was a priest (pontifex) and companion
in your triumphs, Trajan, and within six lustra [i.e. before he was thirty]
a censor and consul.
The man commemorated was D. Terentius Gentianus, son of Trajan's marshal

Terentius Scaurianus. Gentianus had served in the Parthian war and early in
Hadrian's reign was governor of Macedonia, where he held a census. He then
held the consulship - at an unusually early age - but no further office. The HA
reports that he was one of those that Hadrian hated - with particular violence,
because 'he could see that he was esteemed by the senate'. Gentianus had
apparently been one of those 'considered for the imperial position'. His sister,
presumably called Terentia, was married to a senator called Lollianus Avitus,
who had been proconsul of Asia in 128-9. It is plausible enough that she and
perhaps her husband too had joined the imperial entourage at Ephesus in 129.
It is difficult to find an an occasion otherwise when persons of senatorial rank
- normally barred from entering Egypt - could have gone there, if not in the
imperial entourage. Terentia would have been a suitable companion for Sabina
- like Julia Balbilla, she evidently had literary leanings. It seems plausible enough
that she had recently heard the news of her brother's death. 22
South-west of Memphis, around Lake Moeris, and along the canal leading
from the south shore of the lake to the Nile, were clustered a group of flourishing
communities in which the Greek presence was strong. This was the region where
Ptolemy II had settled the '6,475 cleruchs [colonists]', whose descendants
continued to refer to themselves by this designation. Two of these communities,
Berenice on Lake Moeris and Arsinoe on the canal, are known to have
institutions bearing Hadrian's name, an estate (ousia) at the former, a temple at
the latter. No evidence has yet come to light for a visit by Hadrian, but this was
certainly an area where he would recruit settlers for his planned new polisP
Some 140 miles (225 km) south of Memphis lay Oxyrhyncus, which - no
doubt in common with many other places in the Nile valley - had already been
making preparations for Hadrian's visit the previous December, when vast
supplies of food were put in store: they included 200 artabae (some 7,600 litres)
of barley, 3,000 bundles of hay, 372 sucking-pigs, 55 artabae of dates, 2,000
sheep, as well as olives and olive-oil and 'seven baskets of chaff'. Extra supplies,
of barley, were evidently being collected at the end of May, as a further fragment
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of papyrus suggests. Oxyrhyncus later had 'Hadriamc Baths'. But whether they
were so called because the Emperor used them on his visit, or donated the funds
to build them, is a matter of guesswork. It is not even clear whether Hadrian
stayed at Oxyrhyncus on his outward or on his return journey - or indeed on
both. Oxyrhyncus, although not a Greek city, was a fairly Hellenised nome
(district)-capital, where it seems, from the evidence of the numerous literary
papyri found there, Greek literature had plenty of readers. It must in any case
have been large enough to feed not merely Hadrian's immediate entourage but
perhaps as many as 5,000 persons altogether, who could have been catered for
at least for a few days by the supplies that had been stored there. One other
point may be mentioned: Oxyrhyncus had evidently taken a prominent role in
resisting the Jewish revolt in 116-17 - at any rate, a celebration for the victory
over the Jews was still being celebrated there nearly a century later.24
By the second half of October the imperial flotilla had reached Hermopolis,
some 60 miles (96 km) upstream from Oxyrhyncus. This was the city of the
Egyptian Hermes, the god Thoth, who interpreted all secrets. O n 22 October
the festival of the Nile was due and two days later the commemoration of the
death, by drowning in the river, of Osiris - at any rate, 24 October was the day
which the Greeks regarded as the anniversary. It was perhaps on this very day
that Antinous was drowned. 25
The event is reported, briefly enough, by Cassius Dio, the HA and Aurelius
Victor. Dio - himself a Bithynian - begins,
Antinous was from Bithynium, a Bithynian city which we also call

Claudiopolis, and he had become Hadrian's boy favourite (paidikd); and
he died in Egypt, either by falling into the Nile, as Hadrian writes, or, as
the truth is, having been offered in sacrifice. For Hadrian was in any case,
as I have said, very keen on the curious arts, and made use of divinations
and incantations of all kinds. Thus Hadrian honoured Antinous - either
on account of his love for him, or because he had gone to his death
voluntarily, for there was need for a life to be surrendered willingly, to
achieve what Hadrian intended - by founding a city on the spot where
he suffered this fate and naming it after him. He also set up statues of him,
or rather sacred images, practically all over the world. Finally, he declared
that he had seen a star, which he took to be that of Antinous, and gladly
listened to the fictitious tales spun by his companions, to the effect
that the star had really come into being from the soul of Antinous and
had then appeared for the first time. As a result of this, indeed, he
was ridiculed, especially because when his sister Paulina died he had not
immediately accorded her any honours.
From this last remark it has been inferred that Paulina had died recently - and
at Alexandria; in other words that she had been travelling in the imperial
retinue. Her husband Servianus, now in his mid-eighties, was surely too old to
have undertaken such a journey with Hadrian. He lived on, for a few years. 26
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The HA is much briefer still - its account forms the conclusion of the first
long narrative section, which only resumes over five years later with an account
of the succession crisis in the final months.
While sailing on the Nile, he lost his Antinous, for whom he wept like a
woman. There are various stories about Antinous. Some say that he
offered himself as a sacrifice on behalf of Hadrian, others - what both his
beauty and Hadrian's sensuality suggest. At any rate, the Greeks, at
Hadrian's wish, consecrated him as a god, claiming that oracles were given
through him, which Hadrian is supposed to have composed himself.
The HA can be seen to have condensed its source drastically.

Aurelius Victor's account presumably derived ultimately from the same lost
vita Hadriani by Marius Maximus on which the HA largely depended. Victor's
entire section on Hadrian's reign amounts to less than 300 words - a good
quarter of them devoted to Antinous.
As a result of Hadrian's devotion to luxury and lasciviousness, hostile

rumours arose about his debauching of adult males and his burning
passion for his notorious attendant Antinous; and that it was for no other
reason that a city was founded named after Antinous, or that Hadrian set
up statues of the ephebe. Some indeed maintain that this was done
because of piety or religion: the reason being, they say, that Hadrian
wanted to extend his own life-span, and when the magicians demanded a
volunteer to substitute for him, everyone declined, but Antinous offered
himself - hence the aforementioned honours done to him. We will leave
the matter undecided although, in the case of an indulgent personality, we
regard the association between persons of disparate age as suspicious. 27
Had Hadrian not shown the deceased Antinous such remarkable honours -
which will require detailed consideration - the hostile stories about his death
might never have circulated. As it was, Hadrian was constrained to insist, in
writing - the reference by Dio must be to his autobiography - that his death
was accidental. Something else hints at an attempt to scotch the rumour that
Antinous' death was voluntary. The collegium of worshippers of Diana and
Antinous at Lanuvium, near Rome, established six years later (see Plate 32),
provided among other things for the burial of its members - but suicides were
explicitly debarred from this right. Other circumstantial evidence makes volun-
tary death seem probable. In particular, the deified Antinous, though identified
with or portayed as various Greek gods, especially Hermes, Dionysus and Pan,
was explicitly merged with Osiris in the city named after him. It is hard not to
find the fact that his death took place, if not on the very anniversary of Osiris'
drowning, at least very close to it, more than coincidental. Besides this, there
was an ancient Egyptian practice that persons drowned in the Nile received
divine honours. Herodotus was already aware of this in the fifth century BC.
Tertullian mentions it again over 600 years later - and numerous cases are
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attested in the Egyptian records. Surely Antinous had heard out about this. O n
the other side, the concept of laying down one's life to save that of another was
familiar enough to Greeks and Romans alike. The word used by the HA of
Antinous, indeed, devotum, recalls precisely the Roman devotio, of which the
most famous example was that of the Decii, father and son, each supposed to
have fulfilled a vow to lay down his life to save his country. 28
Dio states firmly - 'the truth is' - that the death of Antinous was indeed a
sacrifice and alludes darkly to Hadrian's 'divinations and incantations'. Victor
explicitly refers to 'magicians' (magi), who demanded a substitute to die for
Hadrian so that they could prolong his life. Evidence for Hadrian consulting
just such a 'magician', even if no details are given of the questions he posed, is
supplied by the papyrus account of 'the prophet Pachrates'. It is an alarming
thought that a member of the imperial suite, Julia Balbilla, may have planted
the seeds of this idea that Hadrian could lengthen his life in this way. There was
a story that her maternal grandfather, the astrologer Balbillus, had once advised
Nero to take similar action. As Suetonius had recounted it not long before, Nero
had been greatly disturbed by the appearance of a comet several nights running,
apparently portending ill for himself. Balbillus had advised him to divert the
wrath of heaven by putting some illustrious person to death. Tacitus has a briefer
version, not naming Balbillus, but supplying a date, AD 64. 2 9
There is a little more, circumstantial evidence, to be considered in due course,
that may shed light on Hadrian's state of mind. It is perhaps fruitless to specu-
late, when the truth can never be discovered, unless by an historical novelist.
A middle course might be to postulate that Antinous drowned himself as a
spontaneous act, knowing that Hadrian was concerned about his health and
believing - or having been told - that a 'sacrifice' was needed. It is plausible
enough that Antinous had acquired a kind of death-wish anyway. He had been
with Hadrian for some time, it seems clear - even if the sources are once again
lacking to prove this unequivocally - and was now reaching the age when the
- to the Greeks - traditionally honourable relationship with an older man was
no longer sustainable. To have continued to be the Emperor's male lover after
reaching adulthood could well have seemed to him shameful and degrading. Yet
he may have been aware, with some dismay, that Hadrian wanted to maintain
the tie - Victor, after all, accuses Hadrian of 'debauching adult males'. Not
merely a great novelist but one of the leading Hellenists of modern times came
to the same conclusion: that Antinous' position had become untenable and he
sought a way out. 30
At all events, it seems that it was on 30 October that Hadrian formally
'founded' the 'city of Antinous', on the right bank of the Nile, opposite
Hermopolis, and close to the spot where Antinous died. Some kind of ceremony
may be postulated, likewise a funeral for Antinous. But much remained to do:
the recruiting of settlers, the planning and building of the city, would take
several years. Even the 'paperwork' - the drafting of a constitution in particular
- would take some months, and it is plausible that Hadrian deferred these
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matters until his return to Alexandria. It would also be necessary to shape the
religious consequences, for Egypt and for the Greeks, of what had occurred. For
the time being, it should be remarked that the city was founded more or less
halfway between the two main centres of Hellenism outside the Delta, the
Heptanomia with the descendants of the '6,475 cleruchs' and Ptolemais to the
south. In other words, this is more or less where he had planned to site a new
city - which he had no doubt originally intended to call Hadrianopolis. It
appears that the place where Antinoopolis grew up had previously been called
Bes or had at least had a shrine of this Egyptian god - a nice coincidence, for
Hadrian was enrolled in the Athenian deme of Besa.31
The journey up the Nile continued, of that there is no doubt. Ahead lay
Ptolemais, Egyptian Thebes and Philae. Hadrian was certainly close to Thebes
from 18-21 November and was probably on his way north by this time. But it
is quite unknown whether he had already gone as far as Philae, the island in the
Nile, sacred to Isis, beyond the First Cataract and beyond the last Roman
garrison post which Germanicus had visited, between Elephantine and Syene.
There was a building on the island of Philae called 'Hadrian's Gate', on which
the Emperor was portrayed sacrificing to Isis and Osiris; but this need not
denote his presence. 32
At all events, on 18 November Hadrian was at Thebes and before dawn on
the next day was duly present to experience what no visitor to Upper Egypt
could miss, the singing statue of Memnon. The colossal broken stone figure that
in fact represented the Pharaoh Amenophis or Amenhotep III was called by the
Greeks 'Memnon' after the Ethiopian ally of the Trojans, son of the dawn-
goddess. The statue was one of two seated figures of the Pharaoh, 60 feet (over
18 m) high, set up a millennium and a half earlier to guard the Valley of
the Tombs. The northern of the two statues had lost its upper half as the result
of an earthquake about 150 years earlier. What remained produced a curious
phenomenon: at dawn, as the stone warmed up in the sun's rays, it emitted a
singing sound, 'like the twanging of a broken lyre or harp string', as Pausanias
described it. To hear Memnon sing impelled many to record the experience by
carving their names and the date of the visit on the statue's legs, in verse, if they
were capable of this. The Prefect Titianus had been there in 126, during his first
year of office, and duly 'signed'. Julia Balbilla, the friend of Sabina, immortalised
the visit by Hadrian, Sabina and herself by no fewer than four poems, a total of
over forty lines. 33
The visit of 19 November was something of an embarrassment. Memnon
failed to sing for Hadrian and his party. The next day Balbilla and Sabina
returned and this time the Colossus duly performed. Soon afterwards Hadrian
appeared and he too was favoured with the sound. O n 21 November Balbilla
and Sabina made a third visit and Memnon sang for them again. In her first
poem Balbilla artfully claims that 'yesterday Memnon received the spouse in
silence so that the fair Sabina might come back again - for the lovely form of
the Queen delights you.' Then, after her return - on the 20th - he duly sang,
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'lest the King be vexed at you, since for a long time you have been detaining his
revered wedded wife.' According to Balbilla, 'Lord Hadrian himself loudly
greeted Memnon and left for posterity an inscription declaring how much he
saw and how much he heard, and it was clear to all that the gods love him.' No
trace of an inscription by Hadrian himself survives.
Balbilla shows herself to be a highly educated woman, hailing Memnon as
'son of Dawn and venerable Tithonus - or Amenoth, Egyptian king, as say the
priests knowledgeable in the ancients' legends'. She was not aware that the statue
had been shattered in an earthquake - Strabo, who was there shortly after it
occurred (in 26 BC), supplies this fact - and she repeats the widespread belief
that the impious Persian king Cambyses, who had also 'killed the divine Apis',
had deliberately damaged it. Nonetheless,
I do not believe that this statue of you would therefore perish, I sense
within a soul hereafter immortal. For pious were my parents and grand-
parents, Balbillus the wise and King Antiochus: Balbillus the father of my
mother, who was a queen, and King Antiochus, father of my father. From
their stock I too have obtained noble blood, and these are my writings,
Balbilla the pious.
In her last, briefest poem Balbilla reports that she 'came here with lovely Queen
Sabina.' All her verses were written in the Aeolic dialect, in other words, the
same form of Greek used by the great poetess of Lesbos, Sappho, over 700 years
earlier. The way Balbilla refers to Sabina, combined with her imitation of the
famous Lesbian poetess, raises the question whether there was in fact a lesbian
relationship between the two women, whether Balbilla was Sabina's 'answer to
Hadrian's Antinous'. 34
Two further poems engraved on the Colossus probably derive from other
members of Hadrian's entourage. Both are very brief: 'In vain destroyers ravaged
your body. You still make a sound, as I, Mettius, have heard, o Memnon. Paion
of Side wrote this.' 'That you could speak, Memnon, I, Paion of Side had
previously learned but now I have experienced it in person.' It is plausible to
suppose that the Mettius in question was the consular senator Mettius
Modestus, member of a family from Gallic Arelate, whose father Mettius Rufus
had been Prefect of Egypt forty years earlier. Modestus had been governor of
Lycia-Pamphylia and his son or nephew had held the same post up to the
previous year - indeed, the Mettius might be the younger Modestus. But it looks
as if the poet Paion, from a town in the eastern part of the province both Mettii
governed, had joined his patron as part of the imperial entourage in 129 and
that they had gone on to Syria, Arabia, Judaea and Egypt. Paion later turns up
as a friend of the younger Alcibiades of Nysa, son of Hadrian's chamberlain. A
third possible member of the imperial party was a senator called Herennius
Faustus - since senators were normally banned from entering Egypt, it is hard
to see when a man evidently consul in 121 could have been there, if not with
Hadrian in 130. Faustus did not attempt poetry, or even Greek. Instead he took
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up seven lines, in Latin, recording his names (eight in total) and cursus honorum,
followed by the words 'I heard Memnon (Memnon[em audi]) and perhaps the
date - if so, it was drastically abbreviated, C. etA. co[s] (the consuls of 130 were
Catullinus and Aper). 35
A few days after the last visit to Memnon by Sabina and Balbilla, on 27
November, the Egyptian month Choiak which began on that day and ran until
26 December, was renamed Hadrianos. Whether any particular event was the
reason for the change is not clear, although 27 November was evidently the
birthday of Antinous. Some rather uncertain evidence suggests that Hadrian was
at Oxyrhyncus on 29 and 30 November and at Tebtunis some 50 miles (80 km)
further downstream on 1 December. It is reasonable enough to suppose that he
was back at Alexandria before the end of 130. He seems to have remained there
for several months. 3 6
It is not difficult to infer how he occupied his time at Alexandria in this
second stay. The commemoration of his dead favourite was surely elaborated
here. His own freedman Mesomedes composed a hymn, the rhetor Numenius
a prose consolatio. Mesomedes enjoyed a state salary - reduced by Hadrian's
successor - which suggests that his effort was approved. The poem has not
survived - unless the fragmentary text of a hymn to Antinous from Curium in
Cyprus represents part of it. Pancrates the priest-poet produced his work on the
lion-hunt, adding a personal touch which won Hadrian's favour: 'He showed
Hadrian, when he was staying at Alexandria, the rosy lotus, as a great wonder,
claiming that it should be called Antinoeus - for it had sprung from the earth
when it received the blood of the Moorish lion which Hadrian had killed.' He
duly included verses on the lotus in his poem and 'Hadrian, pleased with the
originality and novelty of his thought, granted him the favour of free meals in
the Mouseion.' As for Numenius' effort, it may be that he followed up Pancrates'
inspiration and produced a string of parallels for the newly named rosy lotus.
At any rate, part of a prose work on this theme is preserved on a papyrus
from Tebtunis in the Heptanomia. It contains an anthology of various items,
including a piece on the Phoenix and another on Hercules and the Eleusinian
Mysteries. The longest surviving part is concerned with the Antinoan lotus,
with parallels for other flowers named after beautiful youths (and one maiden)
who met an early death: Narcissus, Hyacinthus, Cyparissus, Crocus, Daphne
and Hylas - the last being the boy whom Hercules loved. The writer stresses
that the flowers concerned were all pale in colour, unlike that of Antinous, as if
the rosy red of the lotus symbolised his joy at the death for which he had
wished. 37
Another poet offered a much subtler composition at this time. Dionysius of
Alexandria, who may well have been the son of the former head of the Mouseion
of the same name, produced a Guide to the Inhabited World in nearly 1,200
hexameters. The 'Periegete', as he is known from the Greek title of the poem,
artfully concealed details about himself in two acrostichs, in other words
messages delivered by the first letters of successive lines. The first describes the
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work as the 'epic poem of Dionysius, (one) of those (who live) this side of
Pharos' (epe Dionysiou ton entos Pharou), in other words, it identifies him as
Dionysius the Alexandrian - one who lives near the famous lighthouse. In the
second he refers to the 'God Hermes under Hadrian', perhaps a way of alluding
to Antinous. A poem which comprises a wo rid-tour should in any case have had
an appeal to the great imperial traveller. Dionysius manages to structure the
poem in a way calculated to win Hadrian's approval, for example by beginning
with southern Spain. Gades, the home of Hadrian's mother, occurs right at the
opening, closely followed by a mention of Canopus, and Gades crops up again
several times. Adria, the Adriatic, also receives prominence, as if to echo the
Emperor's name. In four places a particular name is given special emphasis by
being repeated in successive lines: Carthage, the River Tiber, Ilium (Troy) - and
the River Rhebas. This prominence thus given to the first three is understand-
able enough, but the purple passage about the obscure Rhebas is at first sight
puzzling. The answer must be that the river was in Bithynia; to call this minor
stream 'the fairest that sweeps the earth', with repetition of its name, was a clever
way of praising Antinous' homeland. 38
The consecration of Antinous as a god was certainly under way rapidly. At
any rate, an inscription from Heraclea Pontica, on the Black Sea coast, seems to
indicate the renaming before the end of the year 130 of the Association of Actors
at Rome as the 'Sacred Hadrianic-Antinoan . . . Synodos. The Greek cities
needed little encouragement to institute a cult of the new divinity. Antinous
received very particular worship, as was to be expected, at his home town of
Bithynium and at Arcadian Mantinea, Bithynium's mother city. Festivals and
religious insitutions of various kinds are attested above all in the Greek-speaking
parts of the empire. At Naples, for example, the phratria (brotherhood) of the
Eunostidae was renamed, the label Antinoitae being added. The Boeotian hero
Eunostus was perhaps believed to have gone voluntarily to his death. 39
As the basis for the constitution of the new city of Antinoopolis, Hadrian
chose that of Naucratis, the oldest Greek polls in Egypt, rather than of Ptolemais
or of Alexandria - the great city would have been an unsuitable model, for it
had been deprived of an essential feature of the polis, the council (boule), by
its Roman conquerors. It is easy to see why an emperor with such a love of
antiquity should prefer the ancient Naucratis to the relative upstart Ptolemais.
Such evidence as there is suggests that the settlers came from the families of the
'6,475 cleruchs' in the Heptanomia and from Ptolemais; some of the men will
probably have been army veterans. The settlers were encouraged to enrol by a
series of very striking privileges, which would put Antinoopolis in an enviable
category of its own: not least, exemption from the poll tax (laographia), from the
tax on goods in transit (enkyklion) - with, initially, some extension of these
exemptions to relatives of new citizens who remained in their place of origin -
and exemption from compulsory public services (liturgies) outside Antinoopolis
itself, were all very attractive. Further, Antinoites would enjoy the right to
choose to have lawsuits in which they were involved heard at Antinoopolis,
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an 'alimentary' system was established - a child support scheme, and the
distribution of free corn, on the model of the frumentatio at Rome, is also
attested. At first sight the aim was to create a 'bulwark of Hellenism in Middle
Egypt'. One further privilege, however, requires this view to be modified:
Antinoites, both men and women, were granted the right of intermarriage with
native Egyptians, epigamia - not enjoyed by the Naucratites. This meant that
non-Greeks could become citizens of the new foundation, and thus acquire
these great benefits. One must infer that Hadrian viewed this as a means
of spreading Hellenism - or, put another way, that he did not regard Hellenic
identity as having a racial basis. 40
Antinoopolis seems to have become the administrative centre for the
Heptanomia. To bolster its economic position a new road named after
the Emperor was constructed, to link it with the Red Sea coastal route south
to Myos Hormos, Claudianus Mons and Berenice, 'supplied with plentiful
watering-places, rest-houses and guard-posts'. An inscription records the com-
pletion of the work in February 137. This measure seems not to have succeeded
- the new route could not compete with the shorter crossings of the desert from
Myos Hormos and Leucos Limen to Coptus. Another privilege, the holding of
regular games, Antinoeia, would, however, unquestionably have brought lasting
economic benefit to the city.41
Two very different sorts of evidence illustrate the Greek and the Egyptian
character of Antinoopolis. A string of miscellaneous papyri referring to its
citizens registers their membership of particular subdivisions of the city, tribes
and demes. As at Athens under the dispensation of Cleisthenes, the tribes were
ten in number; and each of those at Antinoopolis probably had five demes or
parishes. The names of all ten tribes and some forty-two of the demes are
known. There can be no question but that the choice of names was Hadrian's
own. Most of the tribes are called after himself and members of his own family:
his adoptive grandfather and father, Nerouanios and Traianios, his family name,
Ailieus, his own name, Hadrianeios, his sister, Paulinios, his mother-in-law and
wife, Matidios and Sabinios. Otherwise there are Sebasteios, from the first
Princeps, Oseirantinoeios from Osiris-Antinous - and Athenaieus, from Athena
and her city.
The demes within each tribe were clearly meant to be especially appropriate:
Nerva's have names meaning 'founder of the family' and 'grandfather' and
referring to Peace and Vesta, the three known for Traianios mean 'founder',
'victorious' and 'military', while the demes of Hadrianeios include Zenios, after
Zeus, and Olympios and Capitolieus, again referring to Zeus and Jupiter. The
remaining two in Hadrianeios, Sosikosmios, 'saviour of the universe', and
Mousegetaios, 'leader of the Muses', offer an interesting reflection on Hadrian's
self-perception. The demes of Matidios include Demetrieus, referring to
Demeter, and Thesmophorios, both alluding to the Eleusinian Myteries, and
Markianios and Plotinios, recalling Matidia's mother and sister-in-law, while
Kalliteknios, 'mother of beautiful children', alludes to Sabina. As for Sabina's
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tribe, her demes include Heraieus, matching Hadrian's Zenios, Gamelieus, 'of
marriage', and Harmonieus. The latter may just mean 'harmony' and advertise
matrimonial concord, but it probably refers to Harmonia the wife of King
Kadmos in the Theban legend. This couple was supposed to have lived to an
advanced age under the blessing of heaven and then, in the Elysian Fields, to
have been granted everlasting youth. The Theban association seems plausible
in view of another deme-name of the tribe Sabinios, Trophonieus, which
apparently refers to the hero whose oracle was at Boeotian Lebadea. But this,
as well as the fifth deme-name of Sabinios, Phytalieus, may be argued to have
associations with Eleusis, which are, indeed, implied in Gamelieus too. As for
Hadrians sister, the tribe named after her has demes that stress her relationship
to the Emperor, Homognios and Philadelphios, and link her with Isis (Isideios)
and Cybele (Megalesios). Perhaps this was enough to compensate for what Dio
relates, Hadrian's failure to honour Paulina immediately after her death.
The four known deme-names of Oseirantinoeios tribe point to heroes from
Arcadia (Kleitorios and Parrhasios), to Bithynia (Bithynieus) and to the god
Hermes. As for the demes of Athenaieus: they refer to the Attic hero
Erichthonios, to Marathon, Salamis and Artemision, renowned for the victories
in the Persian wars - and to Eleusis. The Mysteries of Eleusis, recalled in several
of the demes of the Sabinios tribe, also determined, it would seem, three of the
deme-names of Sebasteios. The first two, Kaisareios and Apollonieus, simply
honour the name Caesar and Augustus' patron deity Apollo. But the other three,
Asklepieus, Herakleios and Dioskoureios, honour precisely the gods who had
been initiated in the Mysteries before their apotheosis. 42
As already seen from the tribe-names, Antinous was merged with Osiris at
Antinoopolis. A remarkable purely Egyptian record helps to explain this in more
detail. The great obelisk now standing on the Pincio at Rome must at some time
have been brought to the capital from Antinous' city. The four sides of the
obelisk are covered with reliefs and with hieroglyphs, making it one of the last
specimens of an extended text of high quality in the ancient Egyptian writing-
system. It cannot be doubted that Hadrian himself spent some considerable
time, together with Egyptian priests skilled in the ancient lore, composing what
was written on the obelisk.
O n the east side Osirantinous addresses a prayer to Re-Harachte, 'highest of
the gods, who hears the cry of gods and of men, of the enlightened ones and
of the dead'. He asks Re-Harachte to reward him - Hadrian - 'who has founded
a rule of worship in the temples for all men . . . he that is beloved of Hapi and
of all the gods, the lord of diadems - may he live, safe and sound, may he live
for ever like Re, in a fresh and rejuvenated old age!' This last phrase carries an
echo of Aurelius Victor's claim that Antinous had died so that Hadrian's life
could be prolonged. The Empress is also included in the new god's prayer: 'the
great royal lady beloved by him [Hadrian], Sabina, who lives, is safe and in
health, the Augusta, who lives forever'. The west side celebrates Antinous'
deification:
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DEATH IN THE NILE
The god Osiris-Antinous, the justified, is become a youth with perfect face
. . . his heart rejoices after he has received a command of the gods at the
time of his death. For him is repeated every ritual of the hours of Osiris
together with each of his ceremonies as a Mystery. . . . Lord of Hermopolis
[Thoth], Lord of the word of god, rejuvenate his spirit!
The city of Antinoopolis is referred to on the north side, with specific reference
to the games to be held there:
the competition place in his city in Egypt, named after him, for the strong
[athletes] in this land, for the teams of rowers and the runners of the whole
land and for all who belong to the place of the holy writings where Thoth
is present, and they receive prizes and crowns on their head . . . There are
sacrifices every day on his altars.
As well as the games, the oracles and dream-cures of the new god are praised on
this side.
Part of what is written on the fourth, southern face of the obelisk, was long
held to refer to Antinous being buried, not in his city in Egypt, but at Rome or
perhaps at Tibur. It has now been recognised that it does after all mean that his
body was laid to rest at Antinoopolis. The obelisk makes sense, not as a kind
of elaborate funerary monument, but as an integral part of the temple of
Osiris-Antinous in the new city - the only place where the god Antinous was
worshipped in this form. 'The god, who is there, he rests in this place, which
belongs to the Lord of Prosperity, [the ruler] of Rome/ Further,
a place was named after him. The troops of Greeks of the Two Lands
[Upper and Lower Egypt] and those who are in the temples of Egypt come
here from their own places and are given cultivated land to make their life
good beyond measure. A temple of this god is in that place, he is called
there Osiris-Antinous, the justified; it is built of good white stone,
surrounded by statues of the gods . . . and by numerous columns, made as
they used to be made by our forefathers and also as they are made by the
Greeks. All the gods and goddesses will give him the breath of life, so that
he breathes, eternally rejuvenated. 43
Such was the conception of the Greco-Egyptian cult of his new god, over
which Hadrian must have spent many days at Alexandria in the first months of
131, working with some of the most learned hierogrammateis in the land. The
Alexandrian coinage of Hadrian s fifteenth year continued to depict the Emperor
being greeted by the city, which offers him ears of corn and kisses his hand.
But other issues show Hadrian sitting in a ship, proclaiming his departure.
There is no indication of the time of year and it must remain a guess that he
left Egypt in the spring, after a stay of seven or eight months. But new games
were held at for the first time at Antinoopolis in March or April 131, named the
'Great Antinoan' (Megala Antinoeid). They were conducted 'according to the
256
DEATH IN THE NILE
dispositions (taxeis) of the divine Hadrian'. Hadrian had thus planned the
arrangements for the games in detail. He may then have presided in person,
involving another journey up the Nile. However this may be, he probably did
attend another new festival, at Alexandria, 'the Hadrianic Philadelphian contest'
- philadelphios, meaning 'loved by her brother', refers to his sister Paulina. This
was a further gesture, comparable to the naming of an Antinoite tribe
'Paulinios', to counter the sarcasm when his initial failure to respond to her
death was contrasted with the effusive honouring of his favourite.
If he did indeed return to Antinoopolis to inaugurate the first games, perhaps
he took the opportunity of going south to Philae - especially if the events of the
previous autumn had made this impossible then. And if he did go so far south,
perhaps he performed the sacrifice traditionally performed by the ruler of Egypt
in the spring, to ensure the beneficence of the river and a proper flood.44
Even with so much to preoccupy him, Hadrian cannot have neglected the
business of empire. A new appointment to office which he probably made now
was that of his friend Arrian to succeed Rosianus Geminus as legate of
Cappadocia - Arrian is another person who might have been with the imperial
party in 1 3 0 - 1 . The transfer of Sextus Julius Severus from Lower Moesia to
Britain may also belong to 131. At another level, one of his young companions,
the brilliant young jurist Salvius Julian us, became imperial quaestor - effectively
from 5 December 130, for the quaestors traditionally took office on that day.
Julianus probably returned to Rome as soon as sailing conditions were suitable;
and he was given a special assignment, to codify the praetorian edict. That
Julianus was in Egypt is attested by one piece of evidence in his own writings:
he saw there a woman of Alexandria with quintuplets, all of whom had survived.
She was later to be brought to Hadrian's attention at Rome, for the fifth child
was apparently born forty days after the other four. The case was important to
establish the maximum possible length of a pregnancy. Another birth at
Alexandria at this time was within the immediate circle of the Emperor: a son
was born to the ab epistulis Avidius Heliodorus. Forty-four years later this son,
Avidius Cassius, would briefly be recognised at Alexandria as emperor himself.
There was at least one change in his retinue at about the time of Hadrian's
departure from Egypt. Caesernius Quinctianus, who had been with Hadrian on
the North African trip in 128, and whose younger brother Statianus had gone
to the east with Hadrian in 129-30, and perhaps on to Egypt, now returned
from Rome, where he had in the meantime been tribune and praetor, as the
Emperor's comes per Orientem. Statianus in turn could now take leave of
Hadrian, to pursue his cursus honorum in the capital. 45
Whether Hadrian's health had been improved by his stay in Egypt is not clear.
There may be a hint of this on the reverse of a coin issue from the mint at Rome,
in both bronze and silver. It shows Hadrian standing, in military dress, with his
left foot on a crocodile. Quite what is implied is not immediately clear. It has
been argued that Hadrian is shown as the god Horus, and thus as 'King of
Egypt', the vanquisher of evil forces. But it has also been pointed out that it had
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DEATH IN THE NILE
:
^^ * H
* Jf
Plate 27 Hadrian with foot on crocodile

long been standard practice in Egypt for ill or afflicted persons to identify them-
selves with Horus and the demons that were causing them pain with 'scorpions,
crocodiles and serpents'. The identification, accompanied by spells, guaranteed
a cure for the patient who had taken on the god's identity. 46
258
20
ATHENS AND JERUSALEM
Hadrian went from Egypt to Syria, probably sailing along the coast from
Alexandria to Seleucia in Pieria, the port of Antioch, with some overnight stops
on the way. At one of these, the governor of Judaea, Tineius Rufus, may have
reported to him on the poor quality of the weapons which the Jews were being
obliged to manufacture for the army of occupation. Hadrian would have insisted
that defective items be rejected. As the HA noted in its section on his military
measures, 'he took pains to familiarise himself with the military stores . . . and
tried never to buy or to maintain anything that was unserviceable.' He will not
have been aware that the Jewish craftsmen were deliberately turning out sub-
standard weapons. The rejects were put aside, to be reworked and used when the
time was ripe. These items - one may suppose that arrowheads, spearheads and
swords may all have been referred to by Dio, who reports the story - were doubt-
less stored in the vast network of secret hideaways, caves linked by subterranean
tunnels, where rebellion was being actively planned. Hostility to Rome among
the Jewish population was intensifying: the ban on circumcision and the rebuild-
ing of their holy city as a Roman coIonia remained the prime factors. Official
encouragement for the Greeks in Judaea to participate in the cult of Antinous
could only have exacerbated the situation - a statue of the deified youth has been
found at Caesarea.1
At least a short stay by Hadrian at Antioch or elsewhere in Syria must be
assumed in the light of Dio's statement that he was there 'again after being in
Egypt. But the immediate goal was probably Cilicia. Hadrian had been in that
province before, immediately after his accession and on his way to the Danube in
the autumn of 117. But on his subsequent tours of the region, in 123 and 129,
he had probably skirted round Cilicia, north of the Taurus. That he paid a formal
visit some time in his reign is guaranteed by the commemorative coinage which
proclaims the adventui Aug. Ciliciae. Hadrian, wearing short tunic and cloak, his
'travelling uniform5, is shown being greeted by Cilicia. The province wears a long
tunic and cloak, on her head a crested helmet like that of the goddess Athena; and
she holds a military vexillum in her hand. Some of the Cilician cities were no
doubt applying to join the Panhellenion. The allusion to Athena may suggest
that their credentials passed muster in some cases.2
259
Cilicia had been one of Rome's earliest eastern provinces, but its boundaries
had often been drastically adjusted. It had ceased to exist as a separate entity
under the Augustan dispensation, to be revived only in AD 72, by Vespasian.
Those parts that had remained under Roman rule in the interim had been
attached to Syria and were also represented in the Syrian provincial council. The
arrangement had continued for the next six decades. Now at last Cilicia acquired
from Hadrian its own koinon, with its centre, the provincial temple of the
imperial cult, at Tarsus, the metropolis of Cilicia, now also the neocorus, temple
warden. Further, Tarsus was permitted to hold 'Hadrianic Olympics'. The new
koinon, the Hadriana Olympia, and also the newly instituted worship of the
'hero Antinous', are all reflected in the city coinage of Tarsus in the 130s. 3
Tarsus was indeed 'no mean city'. The geographer Strabo had written over a
century earlier of the 'enthusiasm of its population for philosophy and the whole
of Greek paideid, and even compares it with Alexandria as an intellectual centre
- although, unlike Alexandria, 'its men of learning are all natives and foreigners
are not disposed to reside there.' Tarsus had produced several noted philo-
sophers, mainly Stoics, and had its own schools of rhetoric of all kinds. In fact,
Strabo concluded, 'it is Rome that is best placed to testify to the multitude of
learned men from this city, for Rome is full of Tarsians and Alexandrians.' Tarsus
had been an unruly place: Augustus had been obliged to appoint one of the
philosophers, Athenodorus, to rule the city with autocratic powers. More
recently, on the eve of the Parthian war, Dio of Prusa had reproved the Tarsian
oligarchs for their contentious rivalry with other cities, bad relations with the
Roman governors and dangerously oppressive treatment of the working class,
the 'linen-weavers'. 4
The rivalries went on. Tarsus called itself 'Hadriane' - and no fewer than six
other Cilician cities likewise took Hadrian's name, presumably with his
permission: Mopsuestia, Adana, Zephyrium, Germanicopolis, Diocaesarea and
Olba. One of the contenders with Tarsus for primacy in Cilicia, Anazarbus, and
perhaps Flaviopolis as well, both inland cities in the valley of the River Pyramus,
were allowed to hold Olympic-style festivals, Hadriana Olympia. Greek athletics
were, after all, a primary means of fostering Hellenism. Several Cilician cities
had long actively propagated a Greek origin: Tarsus claimed to be Argive, Olba
was supposedly founded by the hero Ajax son of Teucer, Mopsuestia by the seer
Mopsus, both of them just after the Trojan war. Hadrian may be supposed to
have visited some of these places. Apart from this, it was probably now that the
provincial boundaries were adjusted, enlarging Cilicia at the expense of Galatia,
to take in the whole of Isauria and Lycaonia. In the next reign, at any rate, these
'three eparchiae, not previously so labelled, are regularly encountered. 5
Hadrian may have installed a new governor in 131, T Vibius Varus, whose
term of office at any rate probably began about then. There happens to be
preserved an imperial rescript to 'Vibius Varus, legate of the province Cilicia.
It is one of four similarly phrased letters quoted in the Digest, which nicely
illustrate a characteristic feature of Hadrian. The others are to Junius Rufinus,
260
proconsul of Macedonia, to 'Gabinius' (probably Gavius) Maximus, procurator-
governor of Mauretania Tingitana, and to Valerius Verus (province unknown).
All deal with the question of how to handle witnesses - Hadrian stresses that
verbal evidence is much to be preferred to written depositions. The reliability of
witnesses can best be established by the governor himself: 'You are better placed
to tell what credit witnesses should be given, what their rank and reputation
are, which ones appear to be speaking straightforwardly, whether they offer a
premeditated speech or reply, convincingly, ex tempore! In the letter to Rufinus
Hadrian observed that 'I make a practice of interviewing witnesses in person/ 6
Hadrian's next port of call was doubtless in Pamphylia, Cilicia's western
neighbour. It seems that he had not visited that half of Lycia-Pamphylia in 129.
Given that the poet Paion seems to have been in the imperial retinue in Egypt,
one may conjecture that he persuaded Hadrian to make a stop at his native Side.
Nearby cities were also worth a visit, Aspendus on the River Eurymedon, where
Cimon and the Delian League had won a great victory over the Persians 600
years before, Perge and Attalia. The two latter could boast impressive arches in
honour of Hadrian. That at Perge was erected by Plancia Magna, a senator's
daughter, from an Italian settler family that was linked by marriage with Julius
Severus of Ancyra. She had adorned it with statues of four empresses, Plotina,
Sabina and Sabina's mother and grandmother, and of Nerva, Trajan and
Hadrian. Plancias brother, who had governed Cilicia and been consul, seems to
have had a villa at Tibur not far from that of the Emperor. These people would
thus have been very suitable hosts for Hadrian. 7
Further west, at any rate, a stop is definitely attested, at Phaselis, on the once
debatable boundary between Lycia and Pamphylia. The situation is impressive,
on a little peninsula at the foot of the steep pine-forested slopes which lead up
to Mount Solyma. Phaselis had had an evil reputation as a haunt of pirates,
although Cicero spoke up for it: it had been taken over by those people because
of its position - it had three separate harbours - but its inhabitants were really
'Lycians, Graeci homines, Phaselis was indeed a Greek city, founded by the
Rhodians, and had been a member of the Delian League. A splendid new south
gateway had been erected in honour of Hadrian's visit. Statues were erected to
him as 'saviour of the universe and of their country' by Phaselis itself, by a
woman named Tyndaris, and by Phaselis' neighbours, Corydalla and Acalissus,
'on the occasion of his landing'. Sufenas Verus, governor of Lycia-Pamphylia,
who had taken office at the time of Hadrian's visit to Lycia in 129, in succes-
sion to the younger Mettius Modestus, and was presumably in attendance, may
have been designated to the consulship at this time. His colleague was to be
Claudius Atticus, the Athenian millionaire, who would thus become the first
consul from the Greek motherland. 8
Hadrian's movements after the stay at Phaselis are a matter of guesswork. He
probably resumed his journey by sea, but it seems that he was not finished with
Asia Minor yet. A third visit to Ephesus seems likely. The city had at last, with the
completion of its Temple for Hadrian, gained the second Temple wardenship it
261
had coveted, to set it on a par with Smyrna. A possible trace of the imperial
party's presence is a statue-base at Ephesus in honour of a young man of
senatorial rank. He has a string of names - at least ten are preserved, and they
include 'Pedanius Fuscus Salinator'. This may be Hadrian's grand-nephew. At
all events, the honorand, though he had held only the pre-senatorial office
of monetalis (Illvir a.a.a.ff), was attended by a lictor, one Flavius Bassus, a sign
of his unusual rank. The Ephesians may also have done their bit to show
enthusiasm for the cult of the new god, Antinous. At any rate, some years later
a sculpture was set up which seems to identify Antinous with Androclus, the
legendary founder of Ephesus, son of King Codrus of Athens - and the hero is
depicted in the act of slaying a wild boar. It may be that Hadrian and Antinous
had hunted the boar together in the vicinity of Ephesus two years earlier.9
Seven years before, Hadrian had founded a new city in Mysia, in the north
of the province Asia, and named it after his successful bear-hunt there,
Hadrianutherae. Two further new cities in this region carrried his name,
Hadriani and Hadriania. It has often been assumed that their creation was also
the product of his journey in 124. But an inscription from the later second
century indicates that the foundation of Hadriani was several years later than
124, in the period 128-32. The odds are that both cities were formally estab-
lished in 131. If Hadrian was as far north as this, close to the boundary with
Bithynia, it is natural to wonder whether he may not have gone a stage further
and revisited Bithynium, Antinous' home. But this remains a guess, likewise
the possibility that he went back to Cyzicus to inspect progress on the colossal
temple of Zeus. That is at least plausible. He was obviously attracted to Cyzicus
and twice consented to hold local office there. This may have been his last visit
to the great province of Asia. What he did for the province, as its restitutor, his
arrival there, and the personified province itself, were all commemorated on
the imperial coinage shortly afterwards. The figure of Asia is shown in long
tunic and cloak, with a mural crown to signify her many cities, a pruning hook
in her left hand, in her right a ship's rudder, and her right foot rests on a ship's
prow. 10
O n this hypothesis, his route to Athens may have been, this time, from the
north - by ship across the northern Aegean to land on the coast of Macedonia,
perhaps at Thessalonice. He was certainly in this province at some point, as
shown by coins commemorating his adventus and others calling him restitutor
Macedoniae. The province is portrayed wearing short tunic and boots, with
Macedonian head-dress, carrying a whip in her left hand, a patera in the right.
But he might, it is true, have been through Macedonia later, when he finally
returned to Rome. 11
Hadrian was now to winter at Athens for the third time as Emperor. He
would surely have taken the opportunity to participate in the Mysteries again in
the early autumn; a fragmentary letter to him from the Delphians of the
following year may allude to this. The great festive opening of the Panhellenion
was evidently timed for March or April. In the meantime there would be
262
diversion enough: supervision of the numerous building-projects he had set in
motion, and the launching of at least one more, a gymnasium. In a letter of
132 to the Athenians Hadrian formally announced a gift which may refer to
this: 'Know that I take every opportunity to benefit both the city publicly and
individual Athenians. To your boys I give' - here the text breaks off.12
Hadrian's benefits conferred on Athens and individual Athenians were indeed
striking. As the priestess of the Mysteries put it, the 'city of Cecrops' was
favoured by him above all others in Greece. Pausanias likewise writes that 'the
Emperor Hadrian's generosity to his subjects was bestowed most of all on
Athens.' Cassius Dio registers his generosity in a passage referring to this stay:
'He granted the Athenians large sums of money, an annual dole of grain, and
the whole of Cephallenia. The grain-dole was unmatched outside Rome - and,
now, at Antinoopolis. As for Cephallenia, Dio may exaggerate a little, for it
seems Athens did not acquire the whole of this large island. Presumably
substantial tracts of land were involved, which would bring in revenues to the
city coffers. A further measure mentioned here by Dio may also apply to Athens:
Among numerous laws that he enacted was one to the effect that no senator
(bouleutes), either personally or through the agency of another, should have any
tax farmed out to him.' This may have been an attempt to enhance the dignity
of the Athenian boule, making its members subject to the same rule as applied
to the senators of Rome. 13
The HA, in an undated context, mentions an individual act of lavish
expenditure: 'He put on a venatio (wild-beast hunt) at Athens in the stadium
with one thousand animals.' Hadrian had in all likelihood laid the groundwork
for this display when in Africa in 128, for it must have been from there that
most of the animals concerned derived. The Greeks were not accustomed
to 'entertainment' on this scale - an inscription at Ephesus, for example, recalls
as worthy of special note a donation of wild beasts for five days of successive
display. Only twenty-five animals were involved. At this rate, Hadrian's venatio
at Athens could have lasted for 200 days. 14
It may have been during this winter at Athens that Hadrian received
despatches from Arrian, newly installed as legate of Cappadocia, an official
report in Latin and a more personal account in Greek, in the form of a letter.
The Greek version survives, as the Periplus of the Euxine Sea. It begins with
Arrian's arrival at Trapezus (Trebizond), coming from the south, 'after we had
looked at the Euxine Sea from the place where Xenophon, and you, gazed at it.'
He comments on the unsatisfactory statues of Hadrian and Hermes, and asks
Hadrian to send replacements as well as a statue of the local god Philesius. He
goes on to describe his five-day tour of the Roman military installations along
the coast, up to the furthest limit of the imperial frontier at Dioscurias-
Sebastopolis. One place he stopped at was called Athens - 'for there is a place
of this name in the Pontus Euxinus as well, and a temple of Athena, from which
it evidently takes its name.' At Apsarus east of Trapezus he refers to a particu-
larly large garrison, no fewer than five cohorts, which may suggest that trouble
263
was expected - perhaps a reaction to the uncooperative attitude of the Iberian
king Pharasmanes in 129. At several points Arrian mentions putting the units
through training manoeuvres and he notes that the fort on the River Phasis
(Rioni) had been rebuilt in brick instead of earth and timber. Both items were
very much in line with Hadrians army policy. Further touches which would
surely appeal to Hadrian include the description of Amisus as ca Hellenic polls,
a colony of the Athenians' and of the statue of the goddess Rhea in a shrine on
the River Phasis, sitting on her throne cjust like the one sculpted by Phidias in
the Metroon at Athens'. The members of the Panhellenion from outside Greece
proper were to be known as the apoikoi poleis, 'colonial cities'. Arrian also duly
notes the minor client kings in the neighbourhood, mentioning which ones had
been installed by Hadrian himself.15
To this report of his own rapid tour Arrian appends a section describing
the remainder of the Black Sea. When he comes to the Crimea, he refers to
the recent death, datable to the year 131-2, of King Cotys II of the Bosporus,
whose accession eight years earlier was registered by Phlegon. Towards the
end of the letter Arrian dwells at length on the 'island of Achilles' off the
mouth of the Danube - here he in fact confuses the 'Dromos of Achilles' off
the north-west coast of the Crimea with the island of Leuce near the Danube
mouth. He writes of the numerous dedications to the hero. 'This is what
I have learned of Achilles' island', he concludes, 'both from those who have
been there or those who have heard about it from others'. He adds a personal
comment:
This [worship of Achilles] is readily to be believed. For I consider Achilles,

if anyone, to be a hero on account of his nobility and beauty and strength
of mind, and above all because he departed this life in his youth and was
celebrated in Homer's poetry - and because he was a lover (erotikos) and
devoted to his companion (philetairos), to the extent of being ready to die
for his beloved (paidikois).
It is tempting to infer that Arrian intended these remarks as a delicate allusion

to the death and consecration of Antinous - although the parallel between the
two pairs, Achilles and Patroclus, Hadrian and Antinous, is hardly very close. 16
No reply of Hadrian's is preserved. The only surviving letter of his to Arrian
is an official rescript. It is a brief, dry piece, which deals with the withholding
of evidence in cases where the imperial fisc was involved - and might of course
have been written to Arrian when he was proconsul of Baetica or governing
some other province. 17
Whether in March 132 Hadrian again presided at the Dionysia, dressed in
the costume of the country, as he had seven years before, is not recorded. But
there was now to follow a whole series of festivities. A key moment came with
the formal dedication of the vast shrine of Olympian Zeus and the gold and
ivory statue of the god, which, Pausanias writes, 'exceeds all other statues in size
except the Colossi of Rhodes and Rome'. As for the setting,
264
before you go into the temple there are two statues of Hadrian in Thasian
marble and two of Egyptian stone [presumably porphyry]. In front of the
columns are the bronze figures which the Athenians call the 'colonies'
(apoikoi poleis) . . . the whole enclosure is half a mile round, all full of
statues. Every city dedicated a portrait of the Emperor Hadrian, but
Athens outdid the rest by setting up the remarkable colossal statue of him
behind the temple.
Dio and the HA both refer briefly to the dedication - the biographer putting it
in the wrong place, in the context of the stay in 128-9. Dio at least adds a detail,
that the Emperor placed in the temple 'a serpent which had been brought from
India'. The association of the legendary Athenian hero Erichthonius with snakes
- he was sometimes even portrayed as one - is clearly the reason for this act.
Erichthonius was otherwise especially associated with Athena and, as Pausanias
elsewhere notes, the snake beside the great statue of Athena in the Parthenon
'might be Erichthonius'. 18
Pausanias mentions too the other buildings of Hadrian at Athens. In 'the
common sanctuary of all the gods', in other words a Pantheon, was inscribed an
account of'all the sanctuaries of the gods he himself built and those he improved
with furnishings and dedications, and all his gifts to Greek cities, and, when they
asked him, to barbarian cities as well'. Then there were
a shrine for Zeus Panhellenios and one for Hera . . . but his most magnifi-
cent achievement is the Hundred Columns of Phrygian marble, with walls
built just like the columns, and pavilions with gilded roofs and alabaster,
decorated with statues and paintings; and books are also kept here.
This must be 'Hadrian's Library' next to the Roman Agora. Finally, Pausanias
mentions the gymnasium, 'which also has a hundred columns, from the quarry
in Libya - in other words, of Numidian marble, from Simitthu. 19
There seems nowhere to be an ancient account of the inauguration of the
Panhellenion. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the dedication of
the Olympieion and the launching of the Panhellenic organisation were one
and the same occasion. Philostratus in his Lives of the Sophists reports how
Polemo was invited to make a speech at the sacrifice for the consecration
of the temple, 'completed at last after an interval of 560 years'. Polemo
fixed his gaze, as was his custom, on the thoughts that were forming in his
mind, then flung himself into his speech, and delivered a long and
admirable discourse from the base of the temple. As the prooemium of
his speech he declared that his [the Emperor's] initiative had not been
without divine inspiration.
That Polemo rather than Herodes was invited to speak on this occasion has been
seen by some as some kind of rebuff. But Polemo was older; and besides,
Herodes' father had just been honoured with the consulship, may indeed have
265
been holding the office at this very time, as the first consul from Greece proper,
a sufficient sign that the family was highly honoured. 20
The temenos of the Olympieion could well have been served as the meeting-
place of the Panhellenion. Whether the delegates, synedroi, from the member-
cities gathered for the inauguration is not clear. At all events, the organisation
will have been established. A chairman was to preside, with the title of archon,
the earliest known being Cn. Cornelius Pulcher of Epidaurus, who also held the
office of'high priest of Hadrian Panhellenios'. The next five years were set aside
to prepare the first festival. Members are recorded from Achaia, Macedonia,
Thrace, Asia and Crete-Cyrene - none are yet attested from the Greek cities of
the west, such as Massilia (Marseilles), Neapolis (Naples), Tarentum, or those
of Sicily, nor from the eastern provinces of Pontus-Bithynia, Lycia-Pamphylia,
Cilicia, Syria and Egypt, not to mention further afield. Amisus, for example,
in Cappadocia, would surely have applied. In fact, cities in those provinces
may well have been represented. Even the great Hellenic cities of Asia such as
Ephesus and Smyrna are not on record as members - this surely just reflects the
haphazard nature of the evidence. 21
The Panhellenion, when complete, was to meet every four years, to celebrate
the Panhellenia. There were also to be at Athens new Olympic games and new
Panathenaic games. Finally, perhaps only after Hadrians death, the Hadriania
festival was instituted. Thus Athens was effectively to have a great festival every
year, ensuring that there would be an annual influx of competitors, not just
athletes, but poets, musicians and orators, and spectators from all over the
Hellenic world. Athens, now adorned with public buildings of unequalled
splendour, was indeed a new capital for the Greek part of the empire. No
wonder that Hadrian alone among emperors was honoured by a portrait statue
in the Parthenon - at any rate, Pausanias saw none other there. 22
As for almost all the provinces that Hadrian visited, Achaia was commemorated
on the coinage soon after this stay: in this case there is only one variety, Hadrian
as restorer, restitutor, of Achaia. The personified province, wearing a long tunic
and cloak, kneels before the emperor. Between her and Hadrian is shown a large
amphora with a palm-branch emerging from its mouth. It has been identified
as a 'Panathenaic' vase, of the kind made in the fifth and fourth centuries BC,
clear enough symbolism - Hadrian hoped to restore Hellas to the greatness of
her distant past. Close to the Olympieion was erected an arch or gate, some 60
feet (c. 18 m) high and over 40 feet (13 m) wide - its architecture a kind of
cross between the Roman triumphal arch and the Greek city gate. It carries an
inscription on each side. O n that next to the old city, it reads 'This is Athens,
Theseus' city once', the other proclaims 'This is Hadrians, not Theseus' city.'
No builder is named on 'Hadrian's Gate'. It was perhaps the tribute of the
Panhellenion to its founder. The part of the city where the Olympieion stood
had been constituted as a new deme, called 'New Hadrianic Athens', in the new
tribe Hadrianis. It may be that Hadrian, before he left Athens, asked that the
deme be renamed Antinoeis'. 23
266
Jill
Plate 28 Hadrian's Gate at Athens
267
Some time in late spring Hadrian surely thought it was time to return to
Rome. He had been away for the best part of four years. Whether he was already
under way or still at Athens, news came which obliged him to remain in the
east: the Roman army in Judaea had been attacked by rebels, with appalling
losses. This uprising had begun gradually, it appears. 'At first the Romans took
no account of the Jews', Dio reports. The trigger might have been what Dio
mentions as an omen, which gave the people of Judaea 'forewarning before of
the war' of the desolation to come. 'For the tomb of Solomon, whom the Jews
regard with veneration, fell to pieces of its own accord and collapsed.' Perhaps
this had actually been caused by the building operations in train to convert
Jerusalem into Aelia Capitolina. At any rate, the legate Tineius Rufus presum-
ably treated the first symptoms merely as an outbreak of brigandage and took
measures to restore order. However, as Dio records, the insurgents
did not dare try to risk open confrontation against the Romans, but
occupied the advantageous positions in the country and strengthened
them with mines and walls, so that they would have places of refuge
when hard pressed and could communicate with one another unobserved
undergound; and they pierced these subterranean passages from above at
intervals to let in air and light. 24
These subterranean bases were not merely to shelter the civilian population and
to store weapons, including the 'rejects' originally made for Rome. Some of
them were strategically situated and designed as bases for surprise attacks. As has
been pointed out, their numerous entrances 'could be used not merely as escape
hatches but also as sally-ports.' Clearly the initial attacks were extremely
successful. It soon became too much for Tineius Rufus to handle, in spite of a
garrison of two legions and a dozen or more auxiliary regiments. Publicius
Marcellus, governor of Syria, brought reinforcements from the north, including
the legion III Gallica, leaving Julius Severus, legate of IV Scythica, as acting
governor. From Egypt, it seems, came the legion XXII Deiotariana - which
appears to have been wiped out. At any rate it disappears from the Roman army
list; there is in fact no trace of its existence after the year 119. There is a chance,
of course, that XXII Deiotariana had in fact been Judaea's second legion for the
previous few years. There had been several changes of base by the legions of
Syria, Arabia, Judaea and Egypt during the previous decade and a half. If so, it
must have been based in the northern part of the province, at Caparcotna in
Galilee, where VI Ferrata was later in garrison. 25
Neither Dio nor any other source mentions the destruction of an entire
legion. But Fronto, writing thirty years later, did at least refer to 'the great
numbers of Roman soldiers killed under Hadrian by the Jews and by the
Britons'. Dio, too, at the end of his account - which, brief though it may be, is
nonetheless the most detailed that survives - after listing the Jewish losses, adds
that 'many on the Roman side also perished in this war.' After noting, at the
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start of this passage, that little attention was paid to the first signs of trouble, he
goes on to stress that there was before long a real crisis.
Soon, however, the whole of Judaea had been stirred up, and the Jews
everywhere were showing signs of disturbance, were gathering together,
and giving evidence of great hostility to the Romans, partly by secret and
partly by overt acts; many others, too, from other peoples, were joining
them from eagerness for profit, in fact one might almost say that the whole
world was being stirred up by this business. 26
Dio's statement that 'the Jews everywhere' were displaying hostility is

surprising. This can only be a reference to the Jews of the Diaspora. But the
Jewish population in the Cyrenaica, Egypt and Cyprus had been in effect wiped
out in 116-7. He must have meant those in other provinces, perhaps Syria
and Arabia in particular, possibly also in Anatolia. As for the 'many of other
races' who joined the rebels, this might denote non-Jews in Judaea itself as well
as malcontents from, for example, Arabia. However this may be, it was the Jews
of Judaea themselves who took the lion's share. 27
The rebels rapidly liberated part of their homeland and retained control of it
for over three years. This is the startling feature of this uprising, which places it
in a quite different category from that of the Britons, for example, at the begin-
ning of Hadrian's reign. Further, what marked out this war from the great Jewish
revolt that began under Nero was that this time the Jews were united under a sin-
gle leader, who took the title 'Prince of Israel', nsy Ysrl He is not named, to be
sure, in the Roman sources, but they are scanty indeed. The Christian writers call
him 'Bar Cocheba(s)' and attribute to him messianic claims. There is a trace of
this in the Jewish - talmudic - sources: he is there called, instead, Ben or Bar
Koziba, but it is clear that the later rabbis were well aware of the name b. Kokhba
too, the implications of which require discussion presently. O n the coins struck
by the rebel regime his name appears as Shim'on, frequently with the title Nasi
of Israel. The discovery of letters - mostly from the leader himself - and of
documents issued on his authority has now clarified matters. He wrote his letters
under the name Shim'on ben or bar Kos'ba (Srriwn bn Kwsyb' or br Kwsblo) in
Hebrew or Aramaic; one Greek letter has the form Simon Chosiba.28
The documents, like the coins, give Shim'on the title nsy Ysrl Both coins and
documents supply dates. The former have the legends 'Year 1 of the Redemption
of Israel' and 'Year 2 of the Freedom of Israel', with later issues being less
specific, 'For the Freedom of Jerusalem'. But the documents are dated by the
first and second years of the 'Redemption of Israel', by the third year of the
'Freedom of Israel' and by the fourth year of the 'Redemption of Israel'. The
documents also have dates within these years, the earliest being 1 Iyyar, April,
of Year One, the latest 14 Marhesvan, October or November, of Year Four -
with, in some cases, the year being that of Shim'on. It seems that the era began
with the month Nisan, March/April, of 132. Thus the rebels still held some
territory where the Nasis writ ran in autumn 135. 29
269
The name b. Kokhba is clearly a kind of nickname. Kokhba means cstar',
alluding to Balaam's prophecy of the Messiah in the Book of Numbers:. 'I see him,
but not nigh: There shall come forth a star out of Jacob, And a sceptre shall rise
out of Israel, And shall smite through the corners of Moab, and break down all
the sons of tumult.' A passage from the Talmud shows that the great Rabbi
Akiba, at this time in his eighties, applied the prophecy to Shim'on b. Kos'ba.
This produced a sarcastic response from another Rabbi: 'Grass will sprout on
your chin, Akiba, and the son of David will still not have appeared!' The
passage, like others in the talmudic sources, calls the rebel leader 'b. Koziba, not
b. Kos'ba. This form, from the word Koziba, meaning 'lie', was a rival, deroga-
tory name, 'son of the lie' rather than 'son of the star'. Shim'on did not, to be
sure, use the name b. Kokhba on the coins, nor has it, or the title 'king', been
found in the letters or documents. The attempt to identify a star sign on the
coins has also been dismissed. All the same, the title Nasi itself could have
messianic connotations, as in Ezekieh 'My servant David shall be king over them'
is followed a few lines later by 'And David my servant shall be their prince {Nasi)
for ever.'30
The support of the great R. Akiba, the most influential Jewish teacher in
the period after the destruction of the Temple, was certainly important. This
gesture cost Akiba his life. Jewish tradition tells of his arrest by Tineius Rufus,
torture and martyrdom, along with other rabbis. Religion was unquestionably
the driving force behind the uprising. The rebel coinage is entirely Jewish in its
imagery and language. Its script is the old Hebrew, and the Temple, still a vital
memory over sixty years after Titus had destroyed it, is repeatedly displayed,
with the Ark of the Covenant within it. Other symbols, the bunch of grapes,
wreaths of olive, laurel or palm, a jug, a lyre, a vine leaf or a palm tree - with
seven branches - recall the Temple ritual. Foliage and a citrus fruit, the lulav
and the etrog, depict the 'four species' needed for the Feast of Tabernacles. It is
no surprise that a letter from Sh'imon, to Judah b. Manasseh at the base Qiryath
Arabaya, concerns just these items, which Shim'on's 'large army' needed: palm
branches and citrons are to be collected from Jonathan b. Be'ayan and Masabala
- the commanders at En Geddi on the Dead Sea - and Judah himself is to
supply the other two 'kinds', myrtles and willow, 'from your place and send
them to the camp'. Shim'on had sent two donkeys for the purpose. 31
The importance of religion to the rebel Jews is also shown by the appearance
on the earliest coinage of the name Eleazar the Priest. This man has not been
certainly identified, but he might be the same as Rabbi Eleazar of Modin,
referred in the talmudic sources as an uncle of b. Kos'ba. The title 'Priest' as well
as the stress on the Temple and its ritual naturally point to the Jewish aspiration
to restore what Rome had destroyed two generations before and had now begun
to desecrate. Negative evidence - lack of coins of the rebels at Jerusalem and no
reference to Jerusalem in the letters or documents - so far indicates that this
remained only an aspiration. As for the other Roman action which had
provoked the revolt, the ban of circumcision, there was, not surprisingly, a firm
270
Jewish response. Those who had attempted to disguise their circumcision
by epispasmos before the ban - and had perhaps thereby misled Hadrian into
regarding the moment as ripe to abolish the rite - were now obliged to be
recircumcised. More may perhaps be learned of the religious attitudes of the
rebels when the documents are all published in full. One letter refers to a rabbi,
previously unknown, Batnaya bar Meisa, evidently at En Geddi. 32
Shim'on appears from the letters as a stern, even harsh, leader. Jonathan and
Masabala, the two commanders at En Geddi, are ordered to confiscate wheat
and transfer it in safe custody to Shim'on, and the 'men of Tekoa' are to be given
no shelter - disobedience will result in severe punishment. In another letter they
are ordered to send all the men from Tekoa and other places to Shim'on with-
out delay. This and further letters again threaten punishment for failure to obey.
Writing to the commander Joshua b. Galgula, Shim'on threatens that 'if you
maltreat the Galileans with you, I will put fetters on your feet, as I did to ben
Aphlul.' There is only one mention of the enemy: Shim'on, after threatening to
punish his subordinates if they disobey, adds that 'I shall deal with the Romans.'
Given that they were found in caves where the defeated rebels hid, the letters
no doubt belong to the last stage of the war, when the situation was desperate
and Shim'on was obliged to exert extreme discipline. In the earlier phases this
may have been different. It should be stressed, too, that he refers to his men as
'brothers'. 33
The talmudic sources, largely hostile to Shim'on - or 'b. Koziba - confirm
his forcefulness, not least his physical strength, but impute blasphemy rather
than religious rigour to him. 'He caught [Roman] missiles on his knee, then
hurled them back and killed some of the enemy', one story has it. Another tells
of him cutting off a finger from each of his soldiers' hands as a test of their
courage. When the rabbis protested, he substituted the requirement to uproot a
cedar of Lebanon. His alleged impiety or blasphemy comes up with his supposed
prayer 'as he went into battle: "Do not help us, Lord of the World, but do not
put us to shame either!" That is what is written: "Hast thou not, O God, cast
us off? Then go not forth with our hosts!"' There is a suggestion that he was
regarded as king in the story of the 'two brothers [who] lived in Kefar Harruba,
who let no Roman pass but killed them. They said "Let us take Hadrian's crown
and set it on Shim'on's head, for the Romans are coming."' 34
Christian writers are all hostile. The earliest, Justin (Flavius Justinus), a
contemporary, was born of Greek parents in the province at Flavia Neapolis, the
former Samaritan Shechem, and converted to Christianity at about the time of
Hadrian's visit. He records debating at Ephesus with a Jew named Trypho - who
had fled Judaea because of the revolt. In a later work he claims that 'in the Jewish
war that happened in our day Bar Chochebas, the leader of the Jewish rebellion,
ordered Christians - alone - to be punished severely if they did not deny Jesus
was the Messiah and curse him.' Over a century later, Eusebius - also a native of
the country, from Caesarea - put a slightly different complexion on the matter
in his Chronicle: 'Cochebas, leader of the Jewish sect, killed the Christians with
271
persecution of all kinds when they refused to help him against the Roman
troops.' Eusebius has more in the Ecclesiastical History, where he calls Shim'on
'Bar Chochebas' and explains that the name 'means "star"'. He adds that 'the man
was murderous and a bandit, but relied on his name, as if dealing with slaves, and
claimed to be a giver of light who had come down to them from heaven and was
miraculously enlightening them in their suffering.' Jerome makes Shim'on out to
have been a charlatan, 'who kept fanning a lighted straw in his mouth so as
to appear to be breathing out flames'.35
The documentary evidence provides a much more sober picture. What is
striking is that land was being leased and sold, as if peace was reigning, from the
beginning of the revolt all the way through to the end. What is more, land was
'leased from Shim'on b. Kos'ba. What had been imperial domain at En Geddi
had been taken over by Shim'on in the name of the people of Israel. Civil
administrators with the title prnsw were at work as well as military commanders.
Two women, Babatha, whose family came from En Geddi, and Salome, who
had both been living in the province of Arabia, found refuge at En Geddi in the
course of the revolt. As late as August 132, at least five months after it broke
out, Babatha had still been in Arabia. Perhaps anti-Jewish reprisals there had
prompted her move. 36
The presence of Galileans at En Geddi suggests that they too were refugees or
volunteers who had come to join the uprising, for there is no documentary
evidence for the rebels having control of Galilee. O n the other hand, in Lower
Galilee, at least, caves have been found of the kind described by Cassius Dio. As
for the extent of the new independent Jewish state, the finds of its coins and
the places mentioned in the papyri suggest that it controlled at least a block
of territory south of Jerusalem and along the Dead Sea, stretching in the west
to within 18 miles (30 km) of the coast and south to beyond Hebron. There may
have been isolated centres of rebel activity further north. This is suggested by
finds in a caveT 1 miles (18 km) north-west of Jericho. Shim'on's men may have
initially reached the coast between Ascalon and Gaza - coins of these two cities
were used (along with others, including some from the new Roman colonia of
Aelia Capitolina) as the basis for their own issues. He was in a position to get
supplies in by ship across the Dead Sea, so that the east side - in the province of
Arabia - may have been partly under his control. There is no direct evidence yet
that Jerusalem itself was won back. Whether Shim'on had a main headquarters is
not clear. He was at one moment based at Herodium, due south of Jerusalem,
and in the final phase at Bethar, 6 miles (10 km) south-west of the city.37
At some point Hadrian was back in Judaea. This must be implied by Dio,
who, reporting the heavy Roman losses, adds that 'Hadrian for this reason when
writing to the Senate omitted the introductory phrase normally employed by the
emperors, that "If you and your children are in good health, it is well; I and the
legions are in good health."' The talmudic sources have various anecdotes about
Hadrian taking part in the war, and his involvement is implied by some of the
Christian writers. None of these can be pressed. But a senior centurion in the
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Praetorian Guard, C. Arrius Clemens of Matilica in Umbria, was decorated for
war service by Hadrian, hence should have been with him in Judaea. Otherwise,
all that there is to go on is the terminology in inscriptions referring to officers
and men who served. The war is several times called the expeditio Iudaica. Given
the parallels, this term must mean that the Emperor was there, at least for
a token period. When this was and how long he stayed is a matter of pure
conjecture. 38
One other source has generally been taken to indicate Hadrian's presence at
the front. A work on siege-engines, Poliorcetica, is preserved, of which the author
is said to be Apollodorus of Damascus, the architect of Trajan's great Danube
bridge and of many of his buildings at Rome. To be sure, Apollodorus was
alleged by Dio to have been on extremely bad terms with Hadrian, and it is not
clear whether he was still active at Rome at this time or in retirement. Much of
the contents of the Poliorcetica is probably secondary, added in Byzantine
times. But it begins with a letter, which is seemingly authentic, addressed to an
emperor who has apparently sought his advice. 'I am honoured that you judge
me worthy to share in your concern in this matter', he begins and goes on to
refer to designs he is sending, with a member of his staff and a number of
craftsmen. He does not know the places where the siege engines will be needed,
but is aware that it is not a case of besieging cities. Rather the enemy is
occupying 'heights' that are advantageous to him. Apollodorus has supplied
a variety of arrangements, to produce machines quickly, even with unskilled
labour. It may be, then, that Hadrian swallowed his pride and sent for advice to
Apollodorus. 39
But Hadrian was not going to finish the war in person. Dio reports that when
not only 'all Judaea' had been stirred up but even 'the whole world', Hadrian
'then, indeed, sent against them his best generals, of whom the foremost was
Julius Severus. He was sent from Britain, of which he was the governor, against
the Jews.' Sextus Julius Severus, from a colonial family in the province of
Dalmatia, had served for some seven years as the first governor of Dacia
Superior, then, after his consulship at the end of 127, as legate of Moesia
Inferior, before going to Britain. The moment of his transfer to Judaea, follow-
ing Hadrians summons, cannot be pinpointed exactly. His successor in Britain,
a man from southern Spain, P. Mummius Sisenna, was still serving as consul
ordinarius in April 133. But Severus could easily have left Britain before Sisenna
arrived there, leaving one of the legionary legates as acting governor. The fact
that a consul ordinarius was chosen for Britain, and straight after being consul,
in itself suggests an emergency. Former ordinarii did not generally govern
Britain, and it was also usually entrusted to men who had had previous experi-
ence in another consular province. That Hadrian sent for a general to deal with
the crisis who was as far away from the theatre of war as anyone possibly could
be is in itself astonishing. But Hadrian wanted the best man for the job. 40
Severus was also able to bring reinforcements with him, both from Britain
and from the provinces that he went through. What direction he took is a matter
273
of guesswork. But if he was bringing extra troops the Rhine-Danube river route
and then overland via Ancyra through Anatolia may have seemed the best.
It would have taken some months. It could be that Hadrian planned his own
movements so as to meet Severus on the Danube, to confer. At any rate, the
Emperor's comes Caesernius Quinctianus was with Hadrian on a journey per
Orientem et Illyric(um). In other words, Hadrian's route back to Italy took him
through the Balkan and Danube lands. Severus took with him from Britain
at least two young officers. M. Statius Priscus, Prefect of the Fourth Cohort
of Lingones, took up a commission in the Syrian legion III Gallica, and
M. Censorius Cornelianus, a man from Nemausus who was commanding
the First Cohort of Spaniards at Alauna (Maryport), accepted appointment as a
centurion in X Fretensis. At a higher level, Severus was able to call on Q. Lollius
Urbicus, then commanding the legion X Gemina at Vindobona (Vienna) as a
staff officer, and an equestrian tribune of that legion took detachments to the
war. Of the extra units involved, one may even have been the legion IX Hispana,
which, if not still in Britain, was perhaps based in Lower Germany. Transfer
of this legion to the east would explain how a man from Cilicia, who acquired
citizenship from Hadrian, probably on enlistment, came to be serving in the
Ninth. 4 1
The losses in Judaea and the transfer there of large numbers of soldiers
made various emergency measures necessary. For one thing, a batch of sailors or
marines from the Misenum fleet was transferred en bloc to the legion X Fretensis.
Two senators are found recruiting soldiers in Italy. Q. Voconius Saxa Fidus, who,
after his praetorship was curator of the Via Valeria Tiburtina, was entrusted with
levying of soldiers 'in these parts' as well. As he went straight on to be legate of
IV Scythica, he may have brought recruits with him to Syria. Meanwhile
Hadrian's young favourite Caesernius Statianus, who had just served as tribune
of the plebs, was 'sent by Hadrian to recruit young men in the Transpadane
region.' A third recruiting officer was the procurator-governor of the Maritime
Alps - this was Valerius Proculus, who had been commander of the Alexandrian
fleet, probably when Hadrian was in Egypt. The levy was not often resorted to
during the principate. It was not usually popular, and will not have been now,
especially if it meant serving in the war, against a dangerous enemy who had
inflicted heavy losses. The missions of the three men probably represent just the
tip of the iceberg. It may even be wondered if Dio's statement that more or less
'the whole world was in upheaval' refers to this recruiting drive. 42
Before Severus arrived, Tineius Rufus had clearly been exacting a fearful
revenge. 'When military aid had been sent him by the Emperor', Eusebius
records, 'he moved out against the Jews, treating their madness without mercy.
He destroyed in heaps thousands of men, women and children, and under the
law of war, enslaved their land.' These actions presumably explain why it is
Rufus, rather than his successor who finished the war, whose name is associated
with the savage Roman reprisals in the talmudic tradition. No earlier than in the
second half of 133, perhaps not until 134, Rufus was superseded. Severus 'did
274
not venture to attack his opponents in the open, because of their numbers and
their desperation, Dio relates. Instead, 'thanks to the number of his own soldiers
and officers, by cutting off small groups, by depriving them of their food
supplies and shutting them in, he was able to crush, wear out and exterminate
them.' It took time, but there was less danger to his own men, Dio adds. As for
the Jews,
very few survived. Fifty of their most important outposts and 985 better
known villages were rased to the ground. 585,000 were killed in the
various engagements or battles. As for the numbers who perished from
starvation, disease or fire, that was impossible to establish. 43
The decisive stage, not reported by Dio but by Eusebius, and well remem-
bered, although in a very fanciful way, in the talmudic sources, came with a siege
of the fortress of Bethar. It was 'a strong citadel', as Eusebius calls it, 6 miles (10
km) south-west of Jerusalem. The siege 'lasted a long time before the rebels were
driven to desperation by famine and thirst and the instigator of their madness
paid the penalty he deserved.' A story in the rabbinic literature - which makes
the siege last three-and-a-half years, perhaps by confusion with the duration of
the whole war - has 'Bar Koziba' killing his uncle Rabbi Eleazar on suspicion
of treachery. 'Forthwith the sins [of the people] caused Bethar to be captured.
Bar Koziba was slain and his head taken to Hadrian . . . "Bring his body to me",
he ordered.' It was found with a snake around the neck. 'Hadrian exclaimed: "If
his God had not slain him, who could have overcome him?'" No doubt it was
Sextus Julius Severus, rather than Hadrian, to whom the dead leader was
brought. It was probably in autumn 135, or perhaps early 136. 44
The fall of Bethar and the death of Shim'on may not have marked the end of
all resistance and it was probably months before Severus' men had tracked down
all the survivors hiding in their caves. A fragmentary letter surely belongs to this
final phase: ' . . . till the end . . . they have no hope . . . my brothers in the south
. . . of these were lost by the sword'. Hadrian marked the victory by an impera-
torial acclamation, the first time in his reign that he had altered his titulature in
this way. From some time in the second half of 135 he began to be imp. II
Severus and Publicius Marcellus received the highest military honours, an
honorary triumph {triumphalia ornamenta), and numerous soldiers up to the
rank of centurion received the usual dona militaria, awards for valour. Senatorial
and equestrian officers, other than the two consular commanders, however, were
treated on a less generous scale. Celebration of the victory on the imperial
coinage was distinctly muted and indirect in comparison with previous wars. 45
One official measure is first apparent four years later, after Hadrian's death,
but may be ascribed to him. The name of the province was changed: it was no
longer to be called Judaea but Syria Palaestina. This may have been intended as
a punishment; but the Jewish element in the population had indeed become
a minority, it must be assumed. Apart from Dio's figure of more than half a
million dead, large numbers were sold into slavery. So many captive Jews were
275
on sale at the Terebinth market at Hebron that they fetched less per head than
the price of a horse, a Christian source later related. Others were taken to Gaza
and disposed of there or sent to Egypt. Many perished on the way from starva-
tion or shipwreck. There was a further punishment: the Christian writers, with
more than a trace of gloating, report how 'Hadrian commanded by legal
decree and ordinances that the whole nation should be absolutely debarred from
entering even the district around Jerusalem, so that it could not see its ancestral
home even from a distance'. Thus Eusebius. The ban on circumcision was not
lifted, and the rebuilding of Jerusalem as a pagan city, Aelia Capitolina, was
renewed and completed. Jerome adds the detail that 'the statue of Hadrian on
horseback stands to this very day on the site of the Holy of Holies' - together
with 'an idol of Jupiter', he states elsewhere. He also writes of a temple of Jupiter
at the place of the resurrection and Eusebius refers to a shrine of Aphrodite at
the site of Jesus' tomb or at the place of the crucifixion. Coins of the colonia
Aelia suggest that Bacchus, Sarapis and the Dioscuri were also worshipped there.
Finally, according to Jerome, outside the gate on the Bethlehem road there was
a marble image of a pig: this must have been the emblem of the legion X
Fretensis, a wild boar. It is hardly surprising that when Hadrian's name occurs
in the rabbinical literature it is generally accompanied by the imprecation, 'May
his bones rot!' 46
If official reaction to the end of the war was muted, on the non-Jewish side
at a local level there were some signs of celebration. At a Roman fort south of
Scythopolis in Judaea - or, rather, in Syria Palaestina - a massive triumphal arch
was erected. A bronze statue of Hadrian, slightly over life size, has been found
there, the cuirass decorated with scenes of warfare, three pairs of naked hoplites.
The torso may, indeed, have been reused and could once have belonged to a
statue of a Hellenistic king - it would have been peculiarly appropriate if the
head replaced by that of Hadrian had been that of Antiochus Epiphanes. O n a
more modest scale, three small pieces of sculpture, two of them from Egypt,
depict a bearded warrior and defeated enemy. This may represent that province's
reaction. The third piece, a marble statuette which resembles the modest
ceramic reliefs from Egypt, shows the bearded triumphator, sword in right hand
and with his left on the head of an equally bearded kneeling enemy. Was this
supposed to show Hadrian and the vanquished Shim'on b. Kos'ba? It could even
be that the coins portraying Hadrian as 'king of Egypt' or as Horus, with his
foot on a crocodile (see Plate 27), were struck as a gesture to the Egyptians -
who perceived the Jews as the evil 'people of Seth', destroyed by Horus. 4 7
Before reporting Hadrian's inscription in his new Pantheon at Athens,
Pausanias describes Hadrian as, 'in my own day', the one 'who has gone furthest
to honour religion and among all sovereigns the one who has done the most for
the happiness of his subjects. He never willingly went to war, though when the
Jews who live beyond Syria rebelled, he subdued them.' It may be that on the
inscription Hadrian explicitly made such a claim to be a Prince of Peace. About
seventy years later, the passionate African Christian Tertullian would demand:
276
Plate 29 Relief perhaps commemorating Hadrian's victory

over the Jews
277
Quid ergo Athenis et Hierosolymisi 'What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?'
Hadrian might have reversed the question, with some bitterness, when his
Panhellenic triumph was overtaken by the news of the revolt, or during his stay
with the army, or when, back at Rome, he heard the news of the end: 'What has
Jerusalem to do with Athens?'48
278
21
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On 5 May 134 Hadrian wrote a brief, not to say curt, response to a request from
one Ulpius Domesticus, delegate of the Athletic Guild of the Athletes devoted
to Hercules: 'Yes: I shall order a place to be given to you where you wish and a
building to house your records; and if you think it necessary to change your
statutes, that is your affair. Farewell. Third before the Nones of May, from
Rome.' This is the first clearly dated evidence for Hadrian's whereabouts since
he attended the opening of the Olympieion at Athens in the spring of 132. He
had come back from the east through Illyricum, as the inscription of his young
comes Caesernius Quinctianus shows. Which way he travelled through the
Balkans and exactly when is a matter of guesswork. It is plausible, at least, that
he went through Macedonia and Thrace to the Danube in the early spring of
134, taking the opportunity to inspect the Moesian and Dacian provinces and
armies. 1
Moesia and Dacia and their exercitus are represented on the commemorative
coinage of these years, but these issues could of course refer back to Hadrian's
journey in 118. Coins of Hadrians adventus in Moesia show him being greeted
by a sacrificing Moesia in short tunic and cloak, her hair knotted, and carrying
a quiver full of arrows. O n the exercitus coins Hadrian stands, with a lictor,
facing four soldiers. In the spring of 134 Moesia Inferior had a new governor,
Sextus Julius Major of Tralles, a further example of Greeks taking a full role in
the running of the empire. The equivalent coins of the Dacian army are more
varied: Hadrian is shown both mounted and standing, with or without a lictor.
There was no adventus coin for Dacia, but the personified province appears,
seated on a rock; she holds a standard in one hand, her curved native sword in
the other. Dacia Superior would soon receive a new governor, again a Greek, the
son of the great Quadratus Bassus.2
No coins recall Hadrian's progress through Pannonia, even though he had
been there in 118. But there is an issue that must mean he was in or at least very
close to Dalmatia: he is shown addressing the exercitus Delmaticus. This is a little
surprising. That province, although still governed by a legate of consular rank,
had no legions any more and only a modest auxiliary garrison. All the same, a
legate of Moesia Superior under Hadrian, Vitrasius Flamininus, is specifically
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credited with command over the 'Dalmatian army' as well. Perhaps there had
been internal disturbances which required military action. As it happens, in the
silver-mining area of Dardania, in the west of Moesia Superior close to the
border with Dalmatia, the miners erected a temple to 'the Hero Antinous',
apparently on Hadrian's orders. It was dedicated in 136 or 137, and might well
have been begun at the time when Hadrian - as here postulated - was travel-
ling through the area in the spring of 134. Coins commemorating the mines of
Dalmatia and Pannonia, and, it seems, those of Dardania - although the word
metal, is absent from the legend - were struck at about this time, but do not
name Hadrian. 3
The year 134 had opened with Hadrian's brother-in-law Servian us as consul
ordinarius, holding office for the third time, at the age of 84. It was a very belated
gesture to the old man. Annius Verus was the only other senator to have had the
exceptional honour of a third consulship from Hadrian, but he had had it eight
years earlier. Servianus' colleague was Vibius Varus, who had probably been
governing Cilicia when Hadrian was there in 131. Varus was apparently not the
first choice. An inscription giving the consuls of this year had another name as
the colleague of Servianus, which was erased. Had someone suddenly fallen out
of favour? Or - if this was not simply a provincial's mistake - it might be that
the originally designated consul had died at the end of 133. Servianus was now a
widower: his wife Paulina, Hadrian's sister, had died, probably in Egypt, in 130.
His daughter and son-in-law were, it is assumed, also dead. His grandson, young
Fuscus, now about 20, had probably been in Hadrian's retinue. 4
Coins which presumably date to 134 register Hadrian's return with Fortune
the home-bringer and adventus Augusti. A ship on coins proclaiming 'imperial
felicity' may be taken to refer to his journey. One version of the adventus issue
shows Hadrian in military dress, mounted and holding a spear, alluding to his
participation in the war. Others show him in a toga, greeted by the goddess
Roma. Coins which probably also belong to this phase of the reign look like an
assertion of confidence: Mars the Avenger and Jupiter Conservator, Roma
Victrix and Bonus Eventus - 'successful outcome'. 5
He had been away for six years. Servianus was probably no longer in office as
consul by the time that Hadrian returned and would not have been obliged to
welcome him in his official capacity. By April he had been replaced by a suffect
consul, Haterius Nepos - who may have been consul in absence, however, in his
province of Arabia. It is not likely that a governor in the war zone would have
been replaced. Nepos' legion, III Cyrenaica, was actively engaged in the fighting.
Whether Hadrian distributed largess to the people to mark his return is not
directly attested. Dio merely offers an anecdote which indicates that he attended
chariot-races:
after he had returned to Rome, the crowd at a spectacle shouted out their
request for the emancipation of a certain charioteer. He gave his answer
by a written proclamation: 'It is not right for you either to ask me to free
another's slave or to force his master to do so.' 6
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The redoutable Marcius Turbo was probably still Guard Prefect. Dio describes
him as a true man of the people and a veritable workhorse.
He would spend the entire day near the palace and would often go there
even before midnight, when others were going to bed. . . . He was never
seen at home in the day-time, even when he was ill; and when Hadrian
advised him to stay quiet, he replied: 'A Prefect ought to die standing.'
What Dio renders as 'to stay quiet' may well mean 'to retire'; and Hadrian may
not have been entirely happy with Turbo's reply - adapted from a remark of
Vespasian's, applied by Vespasian to himself, as emperor. 7
For the time being Hadrian may have retained Turbo in office. In the end he
was to turn against him. The HA lists a string of friendships that Hadrian
terminated in one way or another. Platorius Nepos, for example, was so confident
of his relations with Hadrian - his long association went back at least twenty,
perhaps as many as forty years - as to deny him admittance when Hadrian came
to visit him on his sickbed. No action was taken against him then. Hadrian
had even thought of Nepos as a possible successor, but then, he was 'led on by
suspicions', and came to detest him. Elsewhere the biographer lists Nepos along
with Attianus and Septicius Clarus, the ill-fated Prefects from the early part of
the reign, as one of those closest of friends whom Hadrian ultimately 'regarded
in the category of enemy' - having been influenced by 'whatever was whispered
about his friends'. Terentius Gentianus, like Nepos supposedly thought of as a
potential successor, had received similar treatment some years earlier. There
would be others among the Senate. 'He compelled Polyaenus and Marcellus
to suicide', the HA claims, with no further details. Polyaenus may have been
from Bithynian Prusa but is otherwise completely unknown. Marcellus is surely
the same as Neratius Marcellus, who had held a second consulship in 129. Two
of Hadrian's closest equestrian advisers, Valerius Eudaemon and Avidius
Heliodorus, were also the object of his disfavour. Eudaemon was 'reduced
to poverty' and Heliodorus 'was provoked by a highly defamatory letter'.
Heliodorus was presumably dismissed from his post of ab epistulis. But he
survived and was evidently restored to favour by 137. Eudaemon had to wait for
the next reign. The HA does not include in its lists of maltreated friends
Favorinus, who, it asserted, was 'conspicuous above the rest' of the various intel-
lectuals that Hadrian treated in friendly fashion. Yet it seems that he was by now
languishing in exile, albeit only on the comfortable and civilised island of
Chios. 8
Whether Heliodorus was replaced as ab epistulis Graecis is not clear. Hadrian
may not have needed a separate Greek secretariat after his return from the east.
His last known secretary, in office at the end of the reign, was Caninius Celer,
who may have dealt with both Greek and Latin correspondence. There were, to
be sure, still plenty of letters coming from the east which required replies.
The drainage works in Boeotia that had been going on for a decade were still
producing problems. A letter of Hadrian's to Coronea in 135 shows that he had
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appointed a special commissioner for Achaia, the ex-consul Aemilius Juncus,
who was to look into the matter. The newly established Panhellenion probably
produced a good many enquiries about membership. Hadrian's reply to one
from Cyrene from 135 is preserved. Also in 135 he accepted in a letter to the
Milesians honorary office as prophet of the temple of Apollo at Didyma, which
he had visited six years before. 9
Hadrian would certainly have had other correspondence from the province of
Asia in 135. The proconsul, Aurelius Fulvus Antoninus, had some exasperating
experiences at the hands of the two great orators, Antonius Polemo and Herodes
Atticus. When staying at Smyrna Antoninus installed himself in Polemo's
mansion, 'because it was the best in Smyrna and belonged to the most notable
citizen. However, Polemo arrived home at night from a journey and raised an
outcry at the door: he was being treated disgracefully, shut out of his own house
- and he thereupon obliged Antoninus to move to other quarters. Hadrian 'was
informed about the incident', Philostratus records, 'but held no enquiry about
it, so as not to reopen the wound'. Later on, he would manage to reconcile the
arrogant Greek with the mild Roman senator. Antoninus' activities in the north
of his province also get mentioned. Herodes Atticus, by now an ex-praetor,
had been made 'curator of the free cities' in Asia. He was devoting particular
attention to Alexandria Troas. O n a narrow road on Mount Ida, Herodes'
carriage nearly forced that of Antoninus into the ditch - or perhaps it was the
other way round, for Herodes was said to have struck the proconsul. Philostratus
played down the incident: 'they did in a way shove each other aside, but this
sort of thing happens in rough country on narrow roads.'
Whether Hadrian heard about this encounter is not recorded. There were
certainly problems over Herodes' extravagant disbursement of public funds. He
had secured Hadrian's approval for 3 million drachmae, or denarii, to improve
the water-supply of Alexandria Troas, presumably by building an aqueduct, with
himself to supervise the project. He overspent by more than double. When the
outlay had reached 7 million, the imperial procurators in the province wrote
to Hadrian: it was a scandal that the tribute from 500 cities should be spent on
a single city's fountain. Hadrian expressed his disapproval to Herodes' father,
who was presumably at Rome. The elder Atticus, 'in the most lordly fashion'
told Hadrian he should not concern himself with trifles. He would donate the
difference between the sum allocated and what had been spent to his son and
Herodes would present the money to the town. 10
Hadrian himself was still pouring out funds on building, at Rome and at
Tibur. The great shrine of Venus and Rome, inaugurated in 121, was nearing
completion. It may have been at this time that Hadrian finally fell out with the
architect Apollodorus. At any rate, Dio associates the fate of Apollodorus with
his criticism of Hadrian's design for the temple. The final straw was when the
statues were ready. Apollodorus gave his opinion, in writing, that they were too
tall for the cellar, 'for now, if the goddesses want to stand up and go out, they
will be unable to do so.' According to Dio, Hadrian was angry and mortified.
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The mistake could not be corrected and, 'restraining neither his anger nor his
grief, he killed the man.' No one seems to be able to believe this story. As far
as the timing is concerned, it would make sense in about 135 or 136. That
Apollodorus was actually executed may be questioned. Presumably he died
shortly after writing this letter, and Hadrian was alleged to have had a hand in
his death. 11
Aurelius Victor, in his brief sketch of Hadrian, implies the construction of
another important building at this time:
More favourably disposed to eloquence and intellectual activities after

settling matters in the east, Hadrian returned to Rome. Here, in the manner
of the Greeks or of Pompilius Numa he began to attend to religious rites,
the laws, the gymnasia, and teachers, so much so that he even established a
school for the liberal arts, which they call the Athenaeum'. He also devoted
himself at Rome in the manner of the Athenians to the mysteries of Ceres
and Libera, which are called the Eleusinian Mysteries.
Victor himself clearly took the 'return from the east' to be at the start of the
reign, but the source he was using probably meant the later return, of 134 -
although, it is true, the east was not entirely 'settled' at that point. The location
of the Athenaeum has not been established. But it looks as if Hadrian was
attempting to give Rome a 'university' building of the kind which he had
endowed at Athens. As for the other items stressed by Victor, privileges for
teachers had been confirmed at the very outset of the reign and attention to
the laws had no doubt been displayed throughout, although Salvius Julianus'
revision of the praetor's edict had presumably only recently been completed.
'Religious rites' and gymnasia, likewise, were hardly a recent preoccupation, even
if the deification of Antinous and the opening of the Olympieion had resulted
in particularly intense activity in both these spheres since 130. It seems likely
enough, too, that some kind of imitation of the Mysteries might belong to the
time just after his return in 134. 12
Hadrian was also building himself a last resting-place. The model was no
doubt the massive Mausoleum of Augustus on the Campus Martius. There was
no room left there, although Nerva's remains had been squeezed in; the Flavians
had been buried elsewhere, and Trajan's ashes were placed in the base of his
Column. The site Hadrian chose was across the Tiber from the Campus
Martius, in the Ager Vaticanus. Work had begun some years earlier on a new
bridge to lead to the Mausoleum. This Pons Aelius was completed and opened
in 134, presumably by Hadrian in person, soon after his return. (Twelve years
before he had ordered the construction of another Pons Aelius, across the distant
Tyne, at the east end of his British Wall.) The great tomb was to be at least as
large as that of Augustus, a good 160 feet (50 m) high, and the total effect would
be more impressive: a circular drum on a square base with a central tower rising
out of it. Above all, the impact must have been enhanced by the new bridge,
lavishly adorned with statues, which formed a monumental approach. 13
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Plate 30 Hadrian's tomb, now the Castel Sant'Angelo
One further structure at Rome may be mentioned, the nature of which

remains uncertain: The eight circular reliefs of hunting scenes known as the
Hadrianic tondi (see Plates 26 and 31). Now on the Arch of Constantine, where
they were reused (with adaptation of Hadrian's head), they have been plausibly
argued to derive from a 'hunting monument', probably set up in the private
grounds on the Palatine. There is a good case for the view - which has, to be
sure, been denied emphatically by some - that they commemorate occasions
when Hadrian and Antinous hunted together, for the bear, the wild boar and the
lion. The original order of the reliefs is a matter of conjecture, but the opening
scene may have been that showing a statue of Apollo, followed by the departure
for the hunt. The capture of a boar would have been followed by a sacrifice to
Diana, that of a bear by an offering to Silvanus, that of a lion by one to Hercules.
If the monument was essentially private, that would explain why the figure
identified as Antinous was portrayed not in the idealized form of the god or hero
that had already proliferated across the empire, but in more realistic manner.
In the lion hunt scene, on this argument, the Emperor's beloved was shown as he
actually appeared shortly before his death. 14
Not far from Rome, at Lanuvium in Latium, a new cult of Antinous and the
virgin huntress Diana was being planned. When it was inaugurated, in 136,
Antinous was portrayed, in a relief of some artistic merit, as Silvanus, the god
of the wild and of huntsmen. The worshippers were members of a society,
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Plate 31 Hadrian's boar hunt {tondo from a Hadrianic hunting monument, reused in
the Arch of Constantine). The youthful figure in the background is clearly
identifiable as Antinous. On the right, the mounted Hadrian, whose head has been
recut to portray Constantine, strikes the boar
collegium, that guaranteed them proper burial. Significantly, suicides were

debarred from this privilege, as if the founders of the cult were aware that talk
of Antinous having taken his own life was officially denied. 15
At Tibur, where Hadrian must have spent a large part of his time, commemo-
ration of Antinous and of Egypt was to be extensive. Statues of Osirantinous, of
Osiris-Apis, of Isis and Horus were set up in an elaborate and complex pattern.
The long 'Canopus' pool, with a Serapeum at one end, probably already
constructed before Hadrian was in Egypt, was now remodelled and given a
new significance. While the Serapeum, dominated by two colossal statues of
Osiriantinous, symbolized Egypt, so it has been argued, the Canopus now stood
for the whole Mediterranean. 16
285
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P t o 32 Relief of the deified Antinous from Lanuvium
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The news of the capture of Bethar and the death of Shim'on is thought to
have reached Rome in autumn 135. But the end may not have come until early
in 136. Hadrian responded by taking the acclamation imp.II. The Senate and
People evidently expressed their gratitude to the Emperor for 'delivering the
republic from the enemy', so a fragmentary inscription at Rome seems to
indicate. Although he took the title imp. II, it does not appear on the imperial
coinage, which nonetheless responded to the ending of the war with various
portrayals of the goddess Victoria and with the legend Virtuti Aug.', the
Emperor s martial courage. Coins of Hadrian with his foot on a crocodile (see
Plate 27) may, as has been suggested, have been intended to appeal particularly
to traditional Egyptian perceptions of the Jews as 'Typhonians', the people of
the evil Seth, with Hadrian as the beneficent Horus. Other explanations have
been canvassed. 17
Egypt had been causing concern. In two successive years the flood had been
inadequate. There was hardship in the province. Hadrian was asked to take
action and on 31 May 136 his edict was published at Alexandria. He had learned
that once again, as in the year before, the rise of the Nile had fallen short or
amounted to nothing - 'even though in the previous years the Nile achieved not
only its full rise but the greater rise which was almost unprecedented and, since
it reached the entire country, caused the land to bring forth very plentiful and
splendid crops.' He was specifically referring here to the unusually favourable
flooding in the years immediately after Antinous' drowning. Now he offered tax
concessions, while expecting - 'be it said with the permission of the god' - that
the Nile itself and the earth would compensate. 18
Just after the end of the Jewish war, the empire was lucky to avoid another
major outbreak in the east. Dio reported:
A second war was begun by the Alani at the instigation of Pharasmanes.
It inflicted serious damage on the territory of the Albani and Media, and
then involved Armenia and Cappadocia. But when the Alani were
persuaded by gifts from Vologaeses and were deterred by Flavius Arrianus,
the governor of Cappadocia, it came to an end.
The Alani, a people or confederation in Transaucasia, beyond Pharasmanes'

Iberian kingdom (Georgia), were closely related to the Sarmatians. Alan
influence in Iberia was strong and Pharasmanes would have had no difficulty in
stirring them up to create trouble and weaken the neighbours - Armenia and
Albania - with whom he had bad relations. The Parthian king Vologaeses III,
already in trouble from a rival, Mithridates, had to resort to Danegeld to get rid
of the invaders. As Pharasmanes was supposedly a Roman client, the Parthian
king sent envoys to Rome to complain. Their arrival is reported by Dio together
with that of other foreign ambassadors, from the Jazyges of the Hungarian plain,
who 'wished to confirm the peace'. Hadrian 'introduced them to the Senate and
was empowered by it to return suitable replies, which he composed and read out
to them.' 1 9
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Arrian's 'deterrence' is illuminated in detail by his own description of his
'Order of battle against the Alani', the Acies contra Alanos. The work survives
only as a fragment, which is clearly from a literary reworking in Greek of an
official Latin report to Hadrian. It is nonetheless a priceless record of the Roman
army in action. Arrian took with him the legion XV Apollinaris from the
northern base at Satala, under its legate Vettius Valens, but only a detachment
from XII Fulminata further south. Six of his auxiliary regiments also sent
detachments only. The emphasis was on cavalry, not least mounted archers: four
cavalry regiments, alae, and the troopers from ten cohortes equitatae, grouped
together, as well as the governor's horse guards and the legionary cavalry. A levy
from the provincial militia of Armenia Minor and Trapezus supplemented the
force. At all events, Arrian's show of force did the trick. Two-and-a-half centuries
later the orator Themistius claimed that Arrian expelled the Alani from
Armenia, crossed the Caspian Gates and set in order the frontier between Iberia
and Albania. Arrian wrote a work on the Alani, from which the fragment doubt-
less derives. Themistius could well have had his information from the Alanica.
The threat had been averted. There may have been a significant reinforcement
of the Cappadocian army in the sequel. At any rate, twenty-five years later there
was apparently a third legion in the province, at Elegia. Perhaps IX Hispana was
moved there when the Jewish war ended. 20
Arrian's success received no official commemoration, so far as is known. 'Wars
were conducted almost without a mention' (silentio), as the HA comments. The
imperial coinage had other landmarks to celebrate in 136. Coin legends such as
'To Eternal Rome' and 'To Venus the Fortunate' make it clear that the great
temple, if not quite finished in every particular, was nonetheless dedicated in
these years, in 136 or 137. Meanwhile an anniversary was approaching: in
August 136 Hadrian would enter the twentieth year of his reign. The coins
announce the taking of 'public vows' to the gods, vota publico,, undoubtedly in
connection with Hadrian's vicennalia. At an appropriate moment Hadrian must
have distributed largess - indeed, coins from his last years refer to his 'sixth' and
his 'seventh liberalitas, the former probably going with his anniversary. He was
the first emperor since Tiberius just over a century earlier to have been able to
celebrate a reign of twenty years.21
Arrian did his bit to mark the vicennalia by composing another work, his
Tactica. It was probably dedicated to Hadrian. The opening lines where this
would have been stated are missing, but, after the long section on Hellenistic
tactics - heavily indebted to Aelian's work published a generation earlier - he
describes this first part as 'written on behalf of the Emperor himself, before
concluding with a section on Roman tactics. Further, the final remarks make
clear that the author was writing for Hadrian.
These then are the exercises of the Roman cavalry and those handed on
from antiquity. The Emperor, indeed, has made the innovation of getting
them to practise barbarian techniques [he refers to those of the Parthians,
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THE BITTER END
Armenians, Sarmatians and Celts]. There are no obsolete practices that
have not been revived and are now practised by the Romans, as well as
those devised by the Emperor with a view to beauty, speed, the inspiring
of terror and practical use. Thus, in our present empire, which Hadrian is
now ruling in his twentieth year, it seems to me that these lines apply far
better now than they did to the ancient Lacedaemonians:
There the spear of the young men flourishes and the sweet-voiced Muse
And Justice with her wide streets, the mainstay of fine deeds.
A poet - Terpander - whose verses had inspired the Spartans 900 years earlier
would certainly have been to Hadrian's liking. 22
Hadrian 'now began to be ill', Dio reports, in a passage that must refer to the
year 136, 'for he had already been subject to nose-bleeds before this and at this
time the condition became very much worse.' His behaviour in Egypt suggests
that he was already concerned about his health then - even, Dio and Victor
claim, to the extent of being prepared to let Antinous sacrifice himself. The text
on the obelisk with Osirantinous' prayer to Re-Harachte, that Hadrian 'may live
for ever like Re, with a fresh and rejuvenated age', hints that, in the immediate
aftermath, Hadrian thought his health had been restored. Now, or at any rate
some time after his return, coins were struck with a most peculiar portrait. They
show Hadrian as a clean-shaven youth, without moustache or beard, merely
with long side-whiskers. The portrayal is matched by a portrait-bust found at
Tibur. He is made to look the same age that Antinous had been at his death,
about twenty, three times younger than he really was - he was sixty on 24
January 136. Was he trying to convince the world - and himself- that he had
been reborn or rejuvenated? A less bizarre interpretation of the portrayal might
be inferred from the reverse of this coin issue, which honours Hadrian's adoptive
parents. Perhaps he was merely pretending that he had already been treated
as the son of Trajan and Plotina when he was only twenty. As it was, his adop-
tion, by the dying Trajan, was thought by many to have been fraudulent. 23
Be this as it may, he must have recognised in the course of 136 that he was
not going to survive much longer. It was time to name a successor and give him
the necessary powers. In the second half of 136 he suddenly announced that he
was adopting as his son one of the consuls of that year, L. Ceionius Commodus.
According to the HA, Commodus' sole recommendation was his 'beauty'. Some
believed that Hadrian had bound himself to Commodus by a secret oath; when,
and for what reason, is not recorded. The decision has also been seen as a belated
making of amends for the killing of Avidius Nigrinus in 118. Nigrinus had been
Commodus' stepfather - and his daughter, furthermore, was married to
Commodus. A modern scholar has even attempted to prove that Commodus
was really Hadrian's bastard son. The truth may well lie elsewhere. The chosen
successor, who had now become Lucius Aelius Caesar, was tubercular. As Dio
puts it, Hadrian 'appointed Lucius Commodus as Caesar for the Romans even
though he frequently coughed up blood'. In fact, he was too ill to appear in the
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Plate 33 Hadrian's first heir, L. Aelius Caesar

{BMC III Hadrian no. 1921)
Senate to thank Hadrian for the adoption. Hadrian cannot have imagined that
this successor would reign for long, even though he was only in his thirties. The
Caesar had a son of his own, to be sure, but he was only five years old, too young
to succeed in his turn unless the next reign lasted well over ten years. But there
were also daughters; and one of them, Ceionia Fabia, was already betrothed, 'at
Hadrian's wish', to a favourite of Hadrian's, his 'Verissimus', the young Marcus
Annius Verus, then in his fifteenth year. Marcus was 15 in April 136, at which
time he had been honorary Prefect of the City during the Alban festival. No
doubt he was appointed by his future father-in-law, for it was the consuls who
nominated this Prefect. It is plausible to suppose that Hadrian already envisaged
Marcus as the successor to his Caesar, whose role would be to keep the throne
warm for a few years. The choice of this man would, at the same time, it might
be thought, conciliate influential elements in the Senate. 24
The adoption was celebrated publicly with shows in the Circus Maximus and
a distribution of bounty to plebs and soldiers. Lucius was designated to be
consul again, for 137, and received the tribunician power. Hadrian determined
that he should go to the armies. He was sent to the Danube, to Carnuntum,
with proconsular power over the two Pannonian provinces. Although the Jazyges
had recently shown themselves to be submissive, by asking for their treaty to be
confirmed, their northern neighbours, the Suebian German Quadi, were restive.
Aelius Caesar was given a suitable staff, including, as quaestor, an adopted son
of Marcius Turbo, while his own freedman Nicomedes now became his
chamberlain, a cubiculo. A Prefect of cavalry in the Pannonian army, Domitius
Rogatus, became the Caesar's own ab epistulis. The legate of one of the
Pannonian legions, Claudius Maximus, took over much of the administrative
work, with the special appointment as iuridicus. The province Pannonia, which
had not been included on the commemorative coinage, could now be shown on
issues of the Caesar, which otherwise mainly focus on abstract personifications:
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concord, good fortune and hope. There may have been concord between
Hadrian and his Caesar, but 'everyone [else] was against' the choice, the HA
says. None more so than old Servian us - and his grandson Fuscus, Hadrian's
grand-nephew, who undoubtedly felt cheated of his birthright. 25
In the course of 137 young Fuscus, whose twenty-fourth birthday fell on 6
April, seems to have made a move. The evidence comes from a group of three
horoscopes, compiled by one Antigonus of Nicaea, which includes that of
Hadrian himself. Another, which can only refer to Fuscus, although he is not
named, gives data establishing his birth on that day in 113, with further details
of his origin and his end.
He was of most eminent and illustrious birth on both his father's and his
mother's side . . . he was brought up with great expectations and was
already looking forward to acceding to the imperial power. Through ill
counsel, he came to grief at the age of about twenty-five, and, being
denounced to the Emperor he was destroyed along with an old man of his
family (who was falsely accused because of him) . . . he was given to
passion and fond of gladiators.
A passage in Hadrian's own horoscope can be taken to mean that he nearly met
his end when aged sixty-one years and ten months, in other words, in November
137. Perhaps this was when Fuscus attempted a coup. The deaths of Fuscus and
'the old man of his family', who must be his grandfather Servianus, are of course
reported by Dio and the HA. Dio evidently made a slip over Fuscus' age, which
he gives as eighteen. 'Servianus and his grandson Fuscus . . . were put to death
on the grounds that they were displeased [at the adoption of L. Commodus]',
Dio writes. The HA refers four times to the death of Servianus, mentioning
Fuscus only on the second occasion, without further explanation: Hadrian,
'having become anxious about a successor, at first thought of Servianus, whom
he subsequently compelled to die . . . Fuscus he held in the greatest abhorrence,
on the grounds that he had been aroused by prophecies and presentiments to
hope for the imperial rule.' 26
Fuscus' end is, indeed, not specifically mentioned by the HA, but the
statement of Dio, combined with the horoscope, makes it clear that he was put
to death. Servianus, the HA maintains, was forced to suicide, 'to prevent him
surviving' Hadrian, 'although he was in his ninetieth year', the first version
has it, repeated later in the last of the four mentions as 'so that he would not
outlive him and become emperor'. In the third and longest passage, Servianus'
death is placed not long before Hadrian's own, and the stated reasons are
'because he had provided a banquet for the imperial slaves, because he had sat
on an imperial chair, placed next to his bed, because, though in his ninetieth
year, he had stood up to meet the soldiers on guard-duty.' Dio, even if he is
wrong in detail, reports a surely authentic story about Servianus' last moments:
'he asked for fire, and, as he offered incense, cried out: "That I am guilty of no
wrong, you gods are well aware. As for Hadrian, this is my only prayer: may
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THE BITTER END
he long for death but be unable to die."' It may be that Servian us was not forced
to take his life in the immediate aftermath of the suppression of Fuscus.
Whatever the precise timing, the whole business was deeply disturbing:
Hadrian's grand-nephew had been executed for allegedly planning a coup, his
brother-in-law had been ordered to take his own life. After its most detailed
version of the end of Servianus, the HA claims that 'many others were put to
death at this time, either openly or by craft.' N o names are supplied. Perhaps
this was when Polyaenus and Marcellus took their own lives, supposedly
compelled by Hadrian to do so. 27
The need to settle the succession, combined with Hadrian's desperate physical
state, had made it impossible for him to undertake any more overseas travel.
Otherwise, surely, he would have wished to go to Athens yet again, for the first
Panhellenic festival of the new Commonwealth in 137. He had certainly been
occupied with the Panhellenion throughout the past few years. A letter of his of
135 is preserved on stone at Cyrene. He had had an enquiry, no doubt one of
many, from the president (archon) of the new body, conerning the application
to join by Ptolemais-Barca in the Cyrenaica. Barca had been founded in the sixth
century BC following a rift in the royal house of Cyrene. Its original population
had been largely native Libyan, and relations with Cyrene long remained hostile.
The Ptolemaic creation of a harbour town for Barca, Ptolemais (Tolmeita),
meant that the double community became more Hellenic. Now, hundreds
of years on, their application for membership was granted, but with only one
delegate. Cyrene, whose people were 'of true Achaian and perfectly Dorian
ancestry', Hadrian pronounced, got two.
One may conjecture that Hadrian's Greek Secretary (ab epistulis Graecis),
Caninius Celer, dealt with this and similar letters. Celer may have been a man
from the Roman colonia Corinth; if so, he would be particularly well equipped
for Panhellenic correspondence. The Panhellenion was, after all, if in its nature
Hellenic, nonetheless the creation of a Roman emperor, and the cult of the god-
emperor was to play an essential part in its activities. The president to whom
Hadrian sent his decision about Barca is not named in the Cyrene inscription.
It has sometimes been assumed that it was Herodes Atticus, who certainly was
archon of the Hellenic commonwealth at some point. But Philostratus, who
reports this, does not give a date. More likely to have been the first president is
a by then elderly man from Epidaurus, who was also active at Corinth where he
held office in the colonia as Helladarch - chairman of the koinon of the Achaians
- and as a high-ranking equestrian official, Cn. Cornelius Pulcher. Plutarch had
long ago dedicated to Pulcher an essay on 'How to profit from one's enemies',
and he was also known to Epictetus. Now the old man had to preside over the
inaugural festival, but without Hadrian. 28
In the winter of 137 Aelius Caesar returned to Rome. He was to deliver an
important speech in the Senate on 1 January 138. But the night before he
fell ill. The medicine that he was given made his condition worse and he died,
from a haemorrhage, before the Senate could meet. Hadrian 'forbade public
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THE BITTER END
"^^Mt^:^ * A^J*.*
Plate 34 Sabina deified (Museo del Palazzo dei Conservatori, Rome).

The heads of Hadrian and the attendant are restored
(also Hadrian's right arm and the masonry with flames)
293
THE BITTER END
mourning, which would have prevented the taking of the New Year vows.' His
plans for the succession were now in pieces, and a new heir had to be found.
The dead Caesar was not deified. There was probably need for another deifica-
tion already. Just before Aelius Caesar's death, it seems, Sabina expired. She had
still been alive after the adoption of the Caesar and two inscriptions from
African Mactaris seem to show her still living in December 137. At all events,
she predeceased Hadrian and was consecrated by him, in a ceremony which
evidently took place no earlier than March 138. The event was registered on the
imperial coinage and a splendid relief survives showing Sabina being carried
heavenward, while a gloomy looking Hadrian sits looking up at her, his index
finger pointing to the new deity. Not surprisingly, given that their relations
had been known to have been bad for years, Hadrian was rumoured to have
poisoned her. 29
The observant or superstitious claimed later that they saw signs of Hadrian's
own imminent end early in 138. O n 23 January, the day before his birthday,
someone came into the Senate wailing. The Emperor was visibly disturbed. He
appeared to start talking about his own death, but his words were unintelligible.
Then he made a slip of the tongue: he meant to say, 'after my son's death' but
instead said 'after my death'. He had disquieting dreams — that he had asked his
father, dead fifty years and more, for a sleeping draught; and that he had been
overcome by a lion. The second dream suggests that his thoughts were still with
Antinous and the lion-hunt in the Libyan desert. 30
O n his sixty-second birthday, 24 January, he ended the speculation. He was
by now 'consumptive as a result of serious haemorrhaging, and this had led to
dropsy.' He 'summoned the most eminent and respected senators to his sickbed.
Lying on his couch, he made a speech' in which he made a virtue of necessity,
praising the superiority of an adoptive son over a natural son - who might be
mentally defective or a cripple; adoption allowed the best to be chosen. He said,
according to Dio's (probably imaginary) version:
But since heaven has taken [Lucius] from me, I have found as emperor
for you in his place the man I now give you, one who is noble, mild,
compassionate and prudent. He is neither young enough to do anything
rash nor old enough to be neglectful. He has exercised authority in
accordance with our ancestral customs, so that he is not ignorant of any
matters which concern the imperial power, but can deal with them all.
I am speaking of Aurelius Antoninus here. I know that he is not in the
least inclined to be involved in affairs and is far from desiring such power,
but still, I do not think that he will deliberately disregard either me or you,
but will accept the rule, even against his will.
Antoninus did not in fact accept immediately, as the HA makes clear. He 'was
given time to consider whether he wished to go through with it.' The ceremony
of adoption took place four weeks later, on 25 February. The new heir now
became Imp. T Aelius Caesar Antoninus - Imp(erator) before his name shows
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C •"** ^ "V %^
^ *%*,
•4* J ^%
Plate 35 Hadrian's second heir, T. Aelius Aurelius Antoninus Caesar, AD 138

that his powers were somewhat enhanced in comparison with those of L. Aelius
Caesar. He also received the tribunician power and was designated to a second
consulship, for 139. Further, he retained his name Antoninus - and his own
Aurelius' would soon relegate to the background the Aelius' he had taken from
Hadrian. 31
Antoninus was fifty-one years old, the grandson of two men who had come
to the fore in AD 69, the Year of the Four Emperors, Aurelius Fulvus and Arrius
Antoninus. Fulvus, the paternal grandfather, came from Gallic Nemausus. The
new Caesar was extremely rich and a thrifty and conscientious landlord, he was
cultured and a good speaker. His mild nature had been demonstrated in his
recent proconsulship of Asia. This year of office had been, in fact, his only
experience of the provinces - he had had no military service whatever. That was
obviously not a disadvantage in Hadrian's eyes: he wanted a man of peace.
But that other considerations were also important was demonstrated by the
condition attached to it. Antoninus in his turn was to adopt both the son of
Aelius Caesar, also called Commodus, and the young man who was betrothed
to Aelius Caesar's daughter Ceionia Fabia, Marcus Annius Verus - who was
also the nephew of Antoninus' wife Faustina. These two would now be called
L. Aurelius Commodus and M. Aurelius Verus. 32
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Hadrian's real choice all along was
the young Marcus, 'Verissimus', still too young in the years 136-8 to be named
as Emperor himself. First Aelius Caesar and then Antoninus were to be place-
holders for him; both were already linked by family ties, Aelius as father-in-law
to be and Antoninus as uncle by marriage. Some support for this interpretation
may be found in what followed the choice of Antoninus. Two senior figures who
fell into disfavour at this time, Ummidius Quadratus and Catilius Severus, were
also related to Marcus, and may have seen themselves as better fitted for the role
295
THE BITTER END
given to Antoninus. Both men had rather more experience of government and
armies than he had. What happened to them may not have been too extreme,
although Hadrian is said to have 'harshly assailed' them {insecutus). Catilius
was removed from office as City Prefect, 'for having designs on the imperial
power'. There is also the mysterious case of Atilius Titian us, who had been
consul ordinarius in 127: Hadrian is said to have 'permitted Titian us to be
accused and convicted of a plot to seize power, and to be proscribed.' This case
may really belong to the next reign, unless the trial began under Hadrian and
the conviction and proscription was delayed, for Titianus is said to have been
proscribed - by the Senate - under Antoninus. 3 3
It was in 138 at the latest that the faithful Marcius Turbo was finally removed
- he is linked with Quadratus and Catilius as one whom Hadrian 'assailed'. Two
successors as Guard Prefects, Gavius Maximus and Petronius Mamertinus, were
evidently appointed. Mamertinus was an obvious choice: he had just completed
a term as Prefect of Egypt - where he had been replaced in 137 by Avidius
Heliodorus, now restored to favour. Gavius seems to have been rather junior in
comparison - only a few years earlier he had got no further than the procurator-
ship of Mauretania Tingitana. But he was to acquire a reputation for 'very
great strictness' and was highly thought of by Antoninus. Given that there
would soon be a change of regime, it was clearly imperative to ensure stability
in the provinces, and a firm and loyal hand in the army commands. Some names
are known. Sextus Julius Sever us had stayed on in the east, moving from Syria
Palaestina to Syria. He may have died in office. At the end of Hadrian's reign
there was something of a crisis in that province. Two or three senior consulars
appear to have governed Syria in rapid succession. One was Julius Major, whose
appointment was normal enough, given that he had been legate of Moesia
Inferior from 134 onwards. The other known name, Bruttius Praesens, consul
as much as twenty years earlier, is surprising. But he was clearly a close and
trusted friend of Hadrian. Elsewhere there are some telling names. Pannonia
Superior had been taken over by Haterius Nepos, a long-standing favourite of
Hadrian who had not incurred his displeasure. Lollius Urbicus, who had been
chief of staff to Severus in the Jewish war, governed Germania Inferior when
the war was over and was appointed thereafter to Britain, perhaps by Hadrian -
a standard promotion. 3 4
The main consideration now, though, was stability at the centre. Hadrian's
measures had guaranteed the future of the imperial position for the next two
reigns. The 'two tier' adoption of 138 is, indeed, reminiscent of Augustus' plans
- first, Tiberius as place-holder for Gaius and Lucius, a role Tiberius rejected,
then, in AD 4, the adoption of Tiberius, who himself had to adopt Germanicus
as joint second-stage heir with his own son Drusus. Hadrian, who had played
the role of a 'new Augustus' for the past fifteen years, is likely enough to have
been emulating the first Princeps in this sphere too. He surely knew the letter
Augustus wrote on his sixty-third birthday to Gaius Caesar: he expressed great
relief at passing this landmark - the 'grand climacteric' of the sixty-third year
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was thought to be especially perilous. Hadrian, 62 in January, was by now
probably convinced that he would not reach his next birthday. After all, he was
a practised astrologer and knew his own future down to the smallest detail. But
the relentless progress of his illness would have made this obvious without
recourse to the science of the stars. 35
His health was now dire. He had had a particularly serious haemorrhage at
Tibur shortly before forcing Servianus to die. In spite of his recourse to 'certain
charms and magic rites which relieved his dropsy for a time . . . he soon filled
up with water again', so Dio reports. 'As he was in fact continuously getting
worse and could be said to have been dying day by day, he began to long for
death. Often he asked for poison or a sword, but no one would give them to
him.' The curse of Servianus was having its effect. No one dared to obey, Dio's
account proceeds, 'although he promised money and immunity/ Even his
Jazygian huntsman Mastor failed him. By threats and promises Hadrian got him
to agree to strike the blow and drew a coloured line below his nipple, at the spot
shown him by his doctor Hermogenes. But Mastor became too frightened to
carry it through. Hadrian 'bitterly lamented the state to which his illness and
his helplessness had reduced him - notwithstanding that it was still in his power,
even when on the brink of death, to destroy anyone else.' 36
The HA reports the aftermath of the bungled attempt using Mastor (whom
it does not name).
Antoninus and the Prefects went in to Hadrian and begged him to endure
the necessity of the disease with equanimity. Antoninus told him that he
would be a parricide if, after being adopted, he allowed him to be killed.
Hadrian was angry and ordered the person who had informed them to be
killed - he was, however, saved by Antoninus. He at once wrote his will.
But he did not lay aside the business of state . . . He did in fact try to kill
himself again; when the dagger was taken from him he became more
violent. He asked his doctor for poison, who killed himself rather than
comply.
The tombstone of the imperial physician, Marcius Hermogenes, has been found
at Rome. Two curious episodes follow in the HA, citing Marius Maximus as the
source.
A woman appeared who said she had been warned by a dream to
recommend Hadrian not to kill himself, for he would regain his health.
She had gone blind for failing to do this, but the command had been
repeated with the instruction to kiss Hadrian's knees, which would restore
her sight.
After she had fulfilled the dream command and returned to the sanctuary —
presumably she had been taking a 'dream cure' - and washed her eyes, her sight
came back. Further, a blind old man from Pannonia came and touched Hadrian
and likewise recovered his sight - and Hadrian's fever left him for a while.
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Plate 36 Hadrian: the last portrait (Museo Vaticano, Rome), found in the imperial
villa at Tivoli
298
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Marius Maximus regarded both persons as spurious. Hadrian then made for the
seaside, at Baiae, leaving Antoninus in charge at Rome. 37
In this last phase Hadrian wrote an autobiography, from which Cassius Dio
and the HA both quote. That it was written late on is shown by the denial,
quoted by Dio, that Antinous' death was other than an accidental drowning. It
also included an apologia for the death of the four consulars in 118. But it was
a full account of his life, for example asserting the ultimate origin of the Spanish
Aelii from Hadria in Picenum. Hadrian also claimed that he had had to drink
heavily during the first Dacian war to accommodate himself to Trajan's habits.
There were also omens, such as a story about losing his cloak when tribune of
the plebs. It was perhaps also in the autobiography that Dio found a remarkable
statement: Hadrian insisted that Vespasian had been poisoned by Titus. The HA
has a peculiar story about the autobiography. Hadrian, it claims, was
so eager for widespread fame that he entrusted some books that he had
written about his own life to his educated freedmen, instructing them to
publish them under their names - indeed, Phlegon's books are also said to
have really been written by Hadrian.
If this was the case with the autobiography, the deception did not last long.
As for Phlegon's works, it seems improbable that the Emperor had actually
composed them. He may, to be sure, have played some part in directing Phlegon's
researches.38
There is a more plausible suggestion about the autobiography. By some
chance, part of a copy of a letter Hadrian wrote to Antoninus at this time has
been preserved on a papyrus from the Fayum. It shows that he was trying to put
up a front of being calm and resigned to his fate, and that he was embarrassed
by his bungled suicide attempts.
Above all I want you to know that I am being released from life neither
prematurely nor unreasonably; I am not full of self-pity nor am I surprised
and my faculties are unimpaired - even though I may almost appear, as I
have realised, to do injury to you when you are at my side, whenever I am
in need of attendance, consoling me and encouraging me to rest. This is
why I am impelled to write to you, not - by Zeus - as one who subtly
devises a tedious account contrary to the truth, but rather making a simple
and accurate record of the facts themselves.
After this preamble, all that remains of the fragment is a remark about his real
parents: £ He who was my father by birth fell ill and died as a private citizen in
his fortieth year, so that I have lived half as long again as he did, and have
reached nearly the same age as that of my mother.' It has been convincingly
argued that the letter to Antoninus is in fact precisely the autobiography,
couched in epistolary form, a practice for which there was good precedent. 39
That he was thinking in these weeks about his real father, dead over fifty years
before, as the letter to Antoninus attests, is confirmed by his dream, reported by
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THE BITTER END
the HA, that he asked his father for a sleeping potion. During his last days or
weeks he composed a little poem which may show that he had at least half-way
recovered his equilibrium. It is an address to his 'little soul', his companion that
must now depart to the cold and gloomy underworld. The language is - surely
deliberately - ambiguous and allusive, with the influence of the old Roman poet,
Ennius, whom Hadrian preferred to Virgil, unmistakable. At the very end, the
calm had again been shattered, if Dio can be believed: 'Finally he abandoned his
careful regimen and by indulging in unsuitable food and drink met his death,
shouting aloud the popular saying: "Many doctors have killed a king!"' 40
Antoninus had been summoned to Baiae and Hadrian passed away there in
his presence on 10 July 138. He was initially buried at Cicero's old villa at
Puteoli, the HA reports, invisus omnibus. The phrase has two meanings - either
'unseen by all' or 'hated by all'. The interment probably was largely private,
unseen. But the HA, or its source Marius Maximus, surely meant that Hadrian
was universally loathed when he died. Dio at any rate understood it this way:
'Hadrian was hated by the people, in spite of his generally excellent rule, on
account of the murders he committed at the beginning and the end of the reign,
for they were unjust and impious.' 41
300
EPILOGUE
ANIMULA VAGULA BLANDULA
animula vagula blandula,

hospes comesque corporis,
quo nunc abibis? in loca
pallidula rigida nubila —
nee ut soles dabis iocos.
Few short poems can have generated so many verse translations and such
copious academic debate as these five lines - a mere nineteen words - of the
dying Hadrian, quoted in the Historia Augusta. Even their authenticity has been
questioned. But that, at least, seems to have been settled, with the observation
that the quality is evidently 'beyond the powers of the author of the HA. There
is also dispute over the meaning: in particular, whether the adjectives in the
fourth line go with the animula or with the loca, and how the third line should
be punctuated. The text here given depends on a variant reading of the third
line and incorporates a conjecture, nubila for nudula, in the fourth. This
produces the following sense:
Little soul, little wanderer, little charmer,

body's guest and companion,
to what places will you set out for now?
To darkling, cold and gloomy ones -
and you won't make your usual jokes.
It seems only fitting that the great traveller, who had so often accepted
hospitality and who had taken a train of comites with him, should at the last have
thought of his soul as a wanderer, ready to take off, this time for the underworld,
his soul that had been his body's hospes and comes. The key to understanding
Hadrian's view of his soul's destination came when an echo was detected of
Ennius' lines on the realms of the dead, the 'Acherunsia templa alta Orci', 'the
lofty temples of Orcus by the river of Acheron', 'pallida leto, nubila tenebris loca,
'places deathly pale, gloomy in their darkness'. Ennius was, after all, a favourite
poet of Hadrian's. The third and fourth lines, so punctuated, form question and
response. 1
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EPILOGUE: ANIMULA VAGULA BLANDULA
Hadrian's character was baffling and contradictory: 'in one and the same
person stern and cheerful, affable and harsh, impetuous and hesitant, mean and
generous, hypocritical and straightforward, cruel and merciful, and always in all
things changeable'. So the HA - and the Epitome de Caesaribus has a similar
version, clearly drawn from the same source, the biographer Marius Maximus. 2
Hadrian's portraits scarcely offer a clue to his inner being: they 'show no aging
or development. In what sense can one speak of his real nature? . . . Was he one
of those characters that remain to some extent consistent or was his character
what he did or what happened to him?' This was the verdict of a specialist on
Hadrian's iconography. 3
As for Hadrian's innermost beliefs, here too one is on uncertain ground: 'those
who endeavour to reconstruct Hadrian's religion directly from his own state-
ments, scant as they are, arrive at diametrically opposite results.' 4 His initiation
at Eleusis - and the cistophorus coin with the legend ren(atus), 'reborn', which
was issued soon after he entered the higher grade - might speak for some kind
of mysticism. His adventure with the Egyptian wonderworker Pachrates, the
death of Antinous and its aftermath, and the strange coin-issue depicting him
as a twenty-year old, point in an even more disturbing direction. In truth, his
real religion had perhaps been Hellenism (beard and all), but at the last, his
dying poem may suggest, he returned to a sceptical, almost Epicurean position,
influenced by the old poet. 5
The symptoms of his fatal illness - haemorrhaging, breathing difficulties,
wasting and dropsy - combined with what is known of his character and behav-
iour, allow an easy diagnosis: coronary atherosclerotic heart disease.6 If his
portraits for the most part show no signs of change, of one at least, the latest, it
has been said that it is 'not so much the depiction of an old man, rather it shows
the effect of a catastrophe' 7 - by which one may understand the cumulation
of blow after blow in his last years, Antinous' death, the Jewish revolt, the
succession crisis.
Plate 37 Hadrian rejuvenated? (BMCIII Hadrian no. 603)

302
Hadrian's favourite Marcus, when he reflected over thirty years later on those
to whom he had a debt of gratitude, totally omits the man to whom he owed
the throne. 8 Fronto, Marcus' teacher, in an early letter to his pupil, conceded
that he had praised Hadrian often enough in speeches in the senate, inpenso et
propenso quoque, 'earnestly - and willingly too'. Yet 'I wanted to propitiate
Hadrian, like Mars Gradivus or Jupiter, rather than loved him . . . I lacked the
confidence - him whom I so greatly revered I did not dare to cherish.' He was
later to wax sarcastic on Hadrian's travels, 'a princeps energetic enough at touring
the armies and haranguing them eloquently', monuments to whose journeys can
be seen in many cities of Europe and Asia - but who preferred to abandon what
Trajan had conquered and to train the troops with wicker weapons instead of
setting them to fight with shield and sword. 9
Six years after Hadrian's death Aelius Aristides, the young orator from
Hadriani, one of the cities founded by Hadrian a decade or so earlier in Mysia,
came to the capital and delivered a festive speech 'In praise of Rome'. Much of
the piece can be taken as a tribute to Hadrian's work, not least the claim that
the whole world was now like one single city-state and that war was a thing of
the past. The empire's constitution embodied the best elements of democracy,
aristocracy, oligarchy and monarchy. Its greatest 'work of perfection' was the
army: in method of recruitment, conditions of service, deployment, training and
discipline. In one particular respect the orator offered implied criticism of
Antoninus' restless predecessor. The smooth functioning of the vast world-state
could be seen in the regular succession of governors for its peoples. Their orderly
conduct was ensured by their overwhelming respect for 'the great governor,
for him who presided over all'. There was 'no need for him to wear himself out
travelling round the whole empire, nor now in one place now in another to
check on every detail in person'. This was an unmistakable contrast between
the placid Antoninus — who was never to leave Italy throughout his reign — and
the perpetually travelling Hadrian. The same point had already been made by
Aristides in his mockery of the Persian King Cyrus, who had been obliged to
wander all round his domains in perpetual motion. 10
Nearly one hundred years after Hadrian's death, Cassius Dio, in spite of his
criticisms, summed up the reign as having been 'in general excellent'. Among
the positive aspects which he had earlier praised, the 'training and disciplining
of the entire army throughout the whole empire' are emphasised: 'What he laid
down is still the basis for military regulations today' The author of the Epitome
de Caesaribus, writing at the end of the fourth century, goes further: 'He estab-
lished the public and palace appointments (officio), and those of the military, on
that model, which - with a few changes made by Constantine - still exists
today.' This judgement is clearly exaggerated. Hadrian's 'army reforms' were of
limited scope. To be sure, he laid great stress on training and discipline, and it
may be that this is what Dio and the author of the Epitome had in mind. There
is also some evidence for him making concessions to soldiers in the legal sphere.
Some tightening up of the issuing of the so-called diplomas, mainly to auxiliary
303
veterans, can be detected: the home town of the veterans commanding officer
is specified from about 129 onwards, and a few years later the order of the seven
witnesses for each diploma was regularised. One small innovation seems to be
that he regraded the prefecture of the ala milliaria as a 'fourth militia'.u
Other things aside, Hadrian's revision of imperial foreign policy and his
establishment of fixed frontiers had a corollary. It became increasingly seldom
for legions to be transferred from one province to another. The armies began to
settle down in their bases even more than they had before, with, no doubt,
effects on recruitment, which must have become more localised. Whether
Hadrian's frontier policy was really an innovation has been disputed. But the
symbolic effect of constructing even the palisade beyond Upper Rhine and
Upper Danube and the fossatum Africae, let alone the elaborate and expensive
set of works known as 'Hadrians Waif is undeniable. Only the HA, it is curious,
specifically refers to these frontier works in connection with Hadrian. But Aelius
Aristides had some lofty allusions to them six years after Hadrians death.
To place walls round the city itself as if you were hiding or fleeing from
your subjects you considered ignoble. Nevertheless, you did not forget
walls, but these you placed around the empire, not the city . . . Beyond the
outermost ring of the civilised world, you drew a second line . . . An
encamped army like a rampart encloses the world in a ring . . . as far as
from Ethiopia to the Phasis and from the Euphrates to the great outer-
most island towards the West; all this one can call a ring and circuit of the
walls. They have not been built with asphalt and baked brick, nor do they
stand there gleaming with stucco. O h - but these ordinary works too exist
at their individual places, 'fitted close and accurately with stones and
boundless in size and gleaming more brilliantly than bronze', as Homer
says of the palace wall.
Ironically, just at the time Aristides delivered these sentiments, work was in full
swing on a new frontier work in Britain, more modest in its construction:
Hadrian's Wall had been abandoned, southern Scotland reoccupied and the
Antonine Wall between Forth and Clyde erected. It is difficult not to see the
decision as, among other things, a studied insult to Hadrian's memory. 12
As to the way the empire was 'run' - its 'administration' - Hadrian made a
striking innovation in Italy, creating in effect four provinces in the peninsula
with four men of consular rank as their governors. The system was abolished
by his successor. It may be argued that the senatorial cursus honorum settled
down into a regular pattern under Hadrian, which lasted throughout the next
reign and beyond. The tenure of only two posts, a legionary command and an
imperial province or its equivalent (for example one of the treasuries), between
praetorship and consulship, seems to have been a sign that a senator was on his
way to govern one or more of the major military provinces after being consul.
The HA mistakenly attributes to Hadrian a policy of extreme lavishness with
third and second consulships. In fact only two men benefited from a third
304
tenure of the fasces and only five second consulships are known. Despite his
pronounced philhellenism, Hadrian's treatment of Greeks or easterners might
seem at first sight less generous than that of Trajan; and more Greeks became
consul ordinarius under Antoninus than under Hadrian. Still, Hadrian was
evidently the first to be able to persuade Greeks of old Greece to enter the
Senate; and under him Greeks are found for the first time governing provinces
in the Latin west. As far as the equestrian career is concerned, the new grading
of the praefectus alae milliariae has already been mentioned. Former holders of
this post were clearly destined for important procuratorships. The HA attributes
to Hadrian the 'innovation' of appointing equites rather than freedmen to be
ab epistulis and a libellis, which is clearly mistaken. O n the other hand, the
earliest record of an advocatus fisci comes from Hadrian's reign and he may have
instituted the post - as the HA claims - which, as a substitute for military
service, was to afford entry into the procuratorships. In general, Hadrian's role
as a reformer of the 'administration' seems to have been exaggerated. 13
It is also questionable whether Hadrian really altered the nature of the
consilium principis, or whether he made such an impact on Roman law as is often
asserted. To be sure, he did entrust the young senator Salvius Julianus with the
'codification' of the praetorian edict. There are also a good many more of his
rescripts in the Digest than there are of his predecessors, which may not be an
arbitrary choice of the compilers: it has indeed been argued that 'rescripts
intended to have permanent validity' were first issued by Hadrian. The HA
places great stress on his innovative activity as a law-giver. One potentially
far-reaching measure was the extension of ius Latii. The grant of Latium maius
meant that not merely the magistrates but all members of the council of a Latin
community gained full Roman citizenship. The measure must have been
intended to spread Roman citizenship more widely in the western provinces,
even if there is very limited evidence for its use. 14
It is above all the provinces of the empire that were affected by Hadrian's
reign. 'He aided the allied and subject cities most generously', Dio stresses. 'He
had indeed seen many of them, more than any other emperor, and he assisted
all of them, one might say, giving some a water supply, others harbours, food,
public buildings, money and various honours.' Dio later adds that 'he also built
theatres and held games as he travelled about from city to city.' The HA makes
the same point: 'In almost all the cities he built something and gave games', and
the Epitome de Caesaribus, with its story of the team of craftsmen organised on
military lines that he took with him, talks of him 'restoring whole cities'. Even
Fronto, in a basically hostile comment, notes that 'you can see monuments of
his travels in a great many cities in Asia and Europe.' Dio and the HA stress, in
particular, what he did for Athens, as does Pausanias; and the HA has at least a
list, however incomplete, of his building at Rome. 15
How many cities Hadrian actually founded is difficult to calculate, given that
a great many eastern communities took his name. He must at least be given
credit for the colonia of Mursa in Pannonia, evidently the last veteran colony of
305
the traditional type in the west, for Hadrianopolis in the Cyrenaica, for
Hadrianutherae, Hadriania and Hadriani in Mysia, Antinoopolis in Egypt, and
Aelia Capitolina in Judaea. The last two foundations epitomise Hadrian's
Hellenism, carried to extremes. His passion for the beautiful Bithynian may, to
be sure, have been the reason for no more than the name of the new city on the
Nile. The cult of the god Antinous which he created, for all the enthusiasm with
which the Greeks took to it, seemed to Romans in the west, at least, a little
bizarre. As for Hadrian's New Jerusalem, the decision to create a pagan city there
and to prohibit circumcision, which together provoked the desperate last Jewish
revolt, surely indicate that his Hellenism had blinded him to reality.16
Tertullian obviously thought Hadrian's restless travelling was prompted by his
insatiable inquisitiveness - meaning a desire to know what should not be
known. Julian the Apostate likewise accused Hadrian of having been 'a meddler
in the mysteries'. The HA, too, comments that 'he was so fond of travelling that
he wanted to learn further, at first hand, about everything that he had read on
different parts of the world.' His 'souvenir' sections of the great Villa, recalling
Athens above all, point in the same direction. A modern observer is prepared to
see in Hadrian's journeys round the provinces a systematic programme: to get
to know the empire at first hand and put the provinces on to a new footing.
But in the last analysis the complex personality and thus the motivation eludes
us, as it did Marius Maximus - for it must be his verdict that is reproduced in
the Epitome de Caesaribus:
changeable, manifold, fickle, born as if to be a judge of vices and virtues,

controlling his passionate spirit by some kind of artifice, he expertly
concealed his envious, unhappy and wanton character, immoderate in
his urge for display; feigning self-restraint, affability and mildness and
disguising his burning desire for glory.
Dio credits Hadrian with 'mildness' (apart from the executions at the beginning
and the end of the reign), but stresses the ambition and jealousy and notes that
fault was found with his 'great strictness, inquisitiveness and meddling'. Yet he
was prepared to conclude that Hadrian 'balanced and made up for these defects
by his careful oversight, prudence, generosity and skill' - and for his policy of
peace. As for 'artifice' in Hadrian's character, one might argue that in a sense he
was acting out a kind of charade during his extended presence in the east -
playing the part of a reborn Pericles and trying to recreate the world of the fifth
century BC.17
In the early fifth century AD Synesius of Cyrene wrote in a letter to a friend,
that
as for the Emperor and the Emperor's friends, and the dance of fortune -
certain names shoot up like flames to a great height of glory and are then
extinguished. But there is utter silence about such things here, our ears are
spared from news of that sort. Maybe people know well enough that there
306
is an Emperor still alive - because the tax-collectors remind us of this every
year. But who the Emperor is, that is not so clear. In fact some of us think
that Agamemnon is still on the throne.
Synesius could make a joke to his friend about the remoteness of the empire's
ruler. But as shown by his essay On Kingship, ostensibly directed to Arcadius, he
strongly disapproved: an emperor should lead his armies in person, tour the
provinces to see his subjects for himself and to be seen by them. Whatever else
Hadrian achieved, his restless touring round the provinces made him the most
visible monarch the Roman empire ever had. 18
307
STEMMA
[Aelius] [Ulpius]
r 1 1
Aelius Hadrianus [Aelius] [Ulpia M. Ulpius Traianus
Domitia Paulina = P. Aelius Hadrianus Ulpia MARCIANA TRAJA

Afer = C. Salonius Matidius
Patruinus
Salonia MATIDIA = (1) [L. Mindius]

= (2) L. Vibius Sabin
, I ,
Domitia Paulina HADRIAN = SABINA Matidia
= L. Julius Servianus
i
Julia Paulina = Cn. Pedanius Fuscus
Salinator
Pedanius Fuscus
STEMMA
NOTES
Augusti and Augustae are given in capital letters. Names in square brackets are of persons
whose existence is not specifically attested. (For [Marcia], [L. Mindius] and [Ulpia] cf.
R.-C. nos. 521, 533, 821.) In the list below, references with a letter, A, D, etc., followed
by a number are to PIR2. For stemmata of Antoninus Pius, the Annii Veri, Domitia
Lucilla and Lucius Verus cf. A.R. Birley, Marcus Aurelius (1987) 235-8; for the Dasumii
and Domitius Tullus, Syme, 'The Testament of Dasumius: some novelties', Chiron 15
(1985) 41-63 = RPV (1988) 521 ff, at 62 f. = 544 f. I have not taken into account the
conjectures of G. di Vita-Evrard, 'Le testament dit "de Dasumius": testateur et benefi-
ciaires', in: Epigrafia juridica Romana (Pamplona 1989) 159-74, which seem to conflict
with the evidence. In particular, she believes, 167 f, that the adopted daughter of Tullus,
Domitia Lucilla the elder, the grandmother of M. Aurelius, had been married to
Hadrian's father as her first husband; hence that Hadrian was Marcus' uncle. Yet in HA
Had. 1.2, not discussed by di Vita-Evrard, Hadrian's mother is called Domitia Paulina,
not Lucilla. She also supposes, 170, Tullus' wife or widow to have been a Domitia,
specifically Domitia Longina, the widow of Domitian: a fascinating notion.
Aelius Hadrianus: Hadrian's great-uncle, named only in HA Had. 2.4.

P. Aelius Hadrianus Afer: Hadrian's father, a cousin of Trajan {HA Had. 1.2; Epit. de
Caes. 14.1). Hence Hadrian was Trajan's first cousin once removed, not his 'nephew',
as a good many modern writers have it. His praenomen P. is supplied by ILS 308 = Sm.
109, Hadrian's inscription from Athens. His other names are given by HA Had. 1.2
(Aelius Hadrianus Afer), the Epit. de Caes. 14.1 (Aelius Hadrianus) and Dio 69.3.1
(Hadrianus Afer). Died when Hadrian was in his tenth year {HA Had. 1.4), i.e. in AD
85 or at the latest January 86, aged 39 according to Hadrian's letter to Antoninus
{PFayum 19 = Sm. 123), hence born in 45 or 46.
Domitia Paulina: Hadrian's mother, from Gades {HA Had. 1.2). D 185; R.-C. no. 330.
(Aelia) Domitia Paulina: Hadrian's sister {HA Had. 1.2, etc.). D 186; R.-C. no. 12. The
letter of Hadrian in the Corpus Glossariorum Latinorum III 37, 44 f, refers to 'sisters' in
the plural. No other full sister is attested. If the letter is not fictional (as most assume),
either Hadrian had at least one other sister, nowhere attested (but di Vita-Evrard,
op. cit., finds another sister in the Testamentum 'Dasumii'), or he was referring to his
sister-in-law Matidia as well as to Paulina.
Julia Paulina: Hadrian's niece. Her full names are supplied in a new fragment of the
Testamentum 'Dasumii', AE 1976. 77. Not in PIR2. R.-C. no. 452. The horoscope of
her son, Hephaestio Thebanus 2.18.65, states that she and her husband died a violent
death. This seems implausible.
L. Julius Servianus: J 569, 631. Hadrian's brother-in-law. Originally called Ser. Julius
Servianus, until adopted by L. Julius Ursus (J 630).
Matidia: M 368; R.-C. no. 533. Hadrian's sister-in-law. Her father was perhaps a L.
Mindius. Apparently unmarried, lived well into the reign of Antoninus Pius if not later.
Pedanius Fuscus: P 197. Hadrian's grand-nephew. Perhaps identical with the polyony-
mous young man honoured at Ephesus, AE 1977. 797 = IKEph 734, P. Velleius P. f.
Tro. Lucullus L. Sertorius Brocchus Pedanius Fuscus Salinator Sallustius Blaesus Cn.
Julius Agricola . . . Caesonius, Champlin, ZPEll (1976) 78 ff; if so, he had perhaps
been adopted after his parents' death. Born 113, died aged about 25, according to the
horoscope in Hephaestio Thebanus 2.18.62-6. Dio 69.17.1 gives his age at death as only
18. Cf. also Caballos Rufino, Senadores (1990) 413 ff.
Cn. Pedanius Fuscus Salinator: P 200. Husband of Hadrian's niece, whom he married
about 106 (Pliny, Ep. 6.26, a letter congratulating Servianus on his daughter's
impending wedding). On his supposed violent death, see above under Julia Paulina.
Pompeia PLOTINA: R.-C. no. 631.
309
STEMMA
(Vibia) SABINA: R.-C. no. 802. Her name Vibia is not directly attested.
Salonia MATIDIA: M 367; R.-C. no. 681.
C. Salonius Matidius Patruinus: M 365.
Ulpia MARCIANA: R.-C. no. 824.
M. Ulpius Traianus: Trajan's father. The article in RE supp. 10 (1965) 1032 ff. (R.
Hanslik) is defective. Cf. Caballos Rufino, Senadores (1990) 305 ff.; Franke,
Legionslegaten (1991) 191 ff.
L. Vibius Sabinus: presumed father of Sabina, cf. R.-C. no. 802.
310
NOTES
ABBREVIATIONS
The following abbreviations of (mostly modern) publications are used in the
Notes. For assistance in finding the full titles of ancient classical sources here
given in shortened form the reader is directed to S. Hornblower and A J . S .
Spawforth, The Oxford Classical Dictionary, third edition (Oxford 1996).
AE LAnnee epigraphique (Paris 1888 ff.)

ANRW H. Temporini and W. Haase (eds), Aufstieg und Niedergang der
rbmischen Welt (Berlin-New York 1972 ff.)
BHAC Bonner Historia-Augusta-Colloquium (Bonn 1964-91)
BMC III H. Mattingly, Coins of the Roman Empire in the British Museum III.
Nerva to Hadrian (London 1936)
CIG Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum (Berlin 1828-77)
CIL Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (Berlin 1863 ff.)
CP; Supp. H.-G. Pflaum, Les carrieres procuratoriennes equestres sous le Haut-
Empire romain (Paris 1961); Supplement (1982)
CPJ V.A. Tcherikover and A. Fuks (eds), Corpus Papyrorum Judaicorum
I—III (London-Cambridge, Mass. 1957-64)
DJDll P. Benoit, J.T. Milik and R. de Vaux, Discoveries in the Judaean Desert
II. Les Grottes de Murabbaat (Oxford 1961)
FGrH F. Jacoby, Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker (Berlin-Leyden
1923 ff.)
FO2 L. Vidman, Fasti Ostienses (2nd edn, Prague 1982)
HA Historia Augusta
Historiae Aug. Historiae Augustae Colloquium, nova series (Macerata-Bari 1991 ff.)
Coll. n.s.
HSCP Harvard Studies in Classical Philology
IG Inscriptiones Graecae (Berlin 1893 ff.)
IGLS Inscriptions grecques et latines de la Syrie (Paris 1929 ff.)
IGR Inscriptiones Graecae ad res Romanas pertinentes (Paris 1906-27)
IKEph Inschriften griechischer Stddte aus Kleinasien. Die Inschriften von Ephesos
I ff. (Bonn 1979 ff.)
ILAfr R. Cagnat, A. Merlin and L. Chatelain (eds), Inscriptions latines
dAfrique (Paris 1923)
ILS H. Dessau, Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae (Berlin 1892—1916)
ILTun A. Merlin (ed.), Inscriptions latines de la Tunisie (Paris 1944)
311
NOTES TO PAGES 1-2
IRT J.R. Reynolds and J.B. Ward-Perkins (eds), Inscriptions of Roman
Tripolitania (Rome-London 1952)
JRS Journal of Roman Studies
MW M. McCrum and A.G. Woodhead, Select Documents of the Principates
of the Flavian Emperors (Cambridge 1966)
ODCC2 Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Churchy 2nd edn by F.L. Cross and
E.A. Livingstone (Oxford 1974)
Ol. J.H. Oliver, Greek Constitutions of Early Roman EmperorsfromInscrip-
tions and Papyri (Philadelphia 1989)
PIR1, PIR2 E. Klebs, P. v. Rohden and H. Dessau (eds), Prosopographia Imperii
Romani (Berlin 1897-8); 2nd edn, E. Groag, A. Stein and L. Petersen
(eds), (Berlin 1933 ff.)
PME H Devijver, Prosopographia Militiarum Equestrium, 5 vols (Louvain
1976-93)
POxy B.P. Grenfel et al. (eds), The Oxyrhyncus Papyri (London 1899 ff.)
R.-C. M.-T. Raepsaet-Charlier, Prosopographie desfemmes de Tordre senatorial
(Ier-IIe siecles) (Louvain 1987)
RE G. Wissowa et al. (eds), Paulys Realencyclopddie der classischen
Altertumswissenschaft (Stuttgart 1893-1978)
RIB R.G. Collingwood and R.P. Wright, The Roman Inscriptions of Britain
I: Inscriptions on Stone (Oxford 1965)
Roxan M.M. Roxan, Roman Military Diplomas 1954-1977(London 1978)
(I); 1978-1984 (London 1985) (II); 1985-1993 (London 1994) (III)
RP R. Syme, Roman Papers I—II (Oxford 1979), III (Oxford 1984), IV-V
(Oxford 1988), VI-VII (Oxford 1991)
SEG Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum (Leyden 1923 ff.)
SIG3 W. Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum (3rd edn, Leipzig
1915-21)
Sm. E.M. Smallwood, Documents Illustrating the Principates of Nerva,
Trajan and Hadrian (Cambridge 1966)
Strack P.L. Strack, Untersuchungen zur romischen Reichsprdgung des zweiten
Jahrhunderts II. Die Reichsprdgung zur Zeit des Hadrian (Stuttgart
1933)
Toynbee J.M.C. Toynbee, The Hadrianic School. A Chapter in the History of
Greek Art (Cambridge 1934)
ZPE Zeitschrift fur Papyrologie und Epigraphik
I N T R O D U C T I O N : T H E EMPEROR HADRIAN
c
1 diese[r] merkwurdigste unter alien romischen Kaisern', Hirschfeld, Kais. Verw.
(1905) 477; cf. S. Dill, Roman SocietyfromNero to Marcus Aurelius (London 1904)
503: 'the most interesting of the emperors'. Hirschfeld, like many others, no doubt
attributed too many 'reforms' to Hadrian. Still, he was something of an exception
to the 'passive' model of the Roman emperor in general as a ruler who reacted rather
than acted, so convincingly laid out by Millar, Emperor (1977). In several respects
Hadrian was hyperactive.
2 On 'frontier policy', the symbolic intention here stressed (and reiterated below,
especially in Chapters 10 and 11, with further remarks in the Notes) has been rather
neglected in recent studies, e.g. Whittaker, Frontiers (1994) and id., in Kennedy,
Roman Army (1996) 25 ff., in spite of the welcome new approaches there offered.
- adoption, Tour consulars', 'new Augustus', etc.: Chapters 8 ff., below. -
Philhellenism, etc., discussed in more detail in many places below. Panhellenion: in
312
NOTES TO PAGES 2-5
an important new study (which I first saw only in November 1996), C.P. Jones,
Chiron 26 (1996) 28 ff., takes a very different view of the role of Hadrian in the
creation of this institution. Here I can only register disagreement on this question
and refer to my 'Hadrian and Greek senators' (ZPE116 (1997) 209ff.). - Still worth
noting is the remark by M.I. Rostovtzeff, The Social and Economic History of the
Roman Empire (Oxford 1926) 117: 'Hadrian, the intellectual, the man of refined
artistic tastes, the last great citizen of Athens, the lover of antiquity.' (The title of
one of Ronald Syme's choicest papers, 'Hadrian the intellectual', in Les Empereurs
romains dEspagne (Paris 1965, 243-53, reprinted in RP VI (1991) 103 ff., echoes
(perhaps unconsciously) the great Russian historian.)
3 Antinous, Jewish policy, succession crisis: more detail in Chapters 19-21. - On the
autobiography, see now above all Bollansee, Ancient Society 25 (1994) 279 ff., show-
ing that it was probably cast in the form of a letter to Antoninus, of which PFayum
19 = Sm. 123 is a fragment coming from the beginning. Other items are known only
from the HA and Dio. - I have discussed the question of sources for the HA in Lives
of the Later Caesars (1976) 14 ff.; Marcus Aurelius (1987) 229 f.; Septimius Severus
the African Emperor {London 1988) 205; most recently in Historiae Aug. Coll. n.s. 3
(1995) 57 ff.; and at length in ANRWU34.3 (1997) 2678-2757. I stand by the
position that the main source for the HA Had. and later lives up to that of Elagabalus
was Marius Maximus (rejecting the 'Ignotus' postulated by Syme, supported by
Barnes, in numerous contributions; for a discussion, cf. now T.D. Barnes, 'The
sources of the Historia Augusta (1967-1992)', Historiae Aug. Coll. n.s. 3 (1995)
1-28). For the coincidence of sources of HA Had. and Epit. de Caes., Schlumberger,
Epitome (1974) especially 78 ff. F. Millar, A Study of Cassius Dio (Oxford 1964), is
still valuable on that author; but the early date of writing there argued must be
rejected. T.D. Barnes, 'The composition of Cassius Dio's Roman History', Phoenix
38 (1984) 240-55, makes a good case for Dio having written during the years
220-31 if not later. If so, he could have used Maximus' Vita Hadriani for his Book
69, as I argue in Historiae Aug. Coll. n.s. 3, 65 f. On the factual value of HA Had,
Pflaum, BHAC1968/69 (1970) 173 ff., is still worth consulting. There is a new dis-
cussion of the bogus letter supposedly by Hadrian in HA Quad. tyr. 7.6-8.10 by A.
Baldini, 'L'epistola pseudoadrianea nella vita di Saturnino', Historiae Aug. Coll. n.s.
3 (1995) 35-56.
4 There is an extensive literature on the 'Second Sophistic'. I have benefited mainly
from Bowersock, Sophists (1969); Bowie, 'Greeks and their past in the Second
Sophistic', Past & Present AG (1970) 3-41; id., in Russell (ed.), Antonine Literature
(Oxford 1990) 53 ff.; Jones, Plutarch (1971); id., Dio Chrysostom (1978). Note also
G. Anderson, Philostratus (London 1986); and - for an attempt at 'debunking' -
P.A. Brunt, 'The bubble of the Second Sophistic', Bull. Inst. Class. Stud. London 39
(1994) 25-51. Swain, Hellenism and Empire (1996), a major new work which will
make necessary a good deal of rethinking on the 'Greek renaissance', could scarcely
be taken fully into account here. On Gellius, L.A. Holford-Strevens, Aulus Gellius
(London 1988).
5 On Suetonius' implied comments on Hadrian, Carney, PAfrCA 11 (1968) 7 ff., is
instructive. Note also id., Turtle 6 (1967) 291 ff., on some related matters. Cf. now
A. Abramenko, 'Zeitkritik bei Sueton. Zur Datierung der Vitae Caesarum\ Hermes
122 (1994) 80-94. (I am quite unconvinced by H. Lindsay, 'Suetonius as ab epistulis
to Hadrian and the early history of the imperial correspondence', Historia 43 (1994)
454-68, who seeks to redate Suetonius' dismissal.) - On Tacitus and his time of
writing, cf. p. 104 and note 32 to Chapter 9. Note also Potter, ZPE 88 (1991) 277
ff., in support of the view that Tacitus was still at work on Ann. under Hadrian.
There are a good many more passages in the Ann. that I have liked to deploy (espe-
cially from the later books) than are cited in the pages that follow. But this has
313
NOTES TO PAGES 5-9
largely been done, inimitably, subtly and (I believe) convincingly, by Syme, Tacitus
(1958).
6 Some of Hadrian's own writings were collected by Cantarelli, Studi e doc. 19 (1898)
13 ff. and by P.J. Alexander, 'Letters and speeches of the Emperor Hadrian',
Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 49 (1938) 141-77. On the 'Sententiae', the
three papers by Schiller, Festgabe Lubtow (1970) 295 ff; Studi Grosso IV (1971) 402
ff.; Atti II Congresso (1971) 717 ff., in support of their authenticity, deserve to be
retrieved from obscurity, as they have now been by Lewis, GRBS 32 (1991) 267 ff.
1 have not attempted a systematic discussion of Hadrian's 'legal policy'.
7 Fronto is cited by the traditional numbering and by page references to the new
edition by M.P.J, van den Hout (Leipzig 1988). - On the horoscopes preserved by
Hephaestio Thebanus, now in the edition by D. Pingree (Leipzig 1973), Cramer,
Astrology (1954) 163 ff., was a pioneering study, developing W. Kroll, Catalogus
CodicumAstrologorum GraecorumW (Brussels 1903) 67 ff; C.E. Ruelle, ibid. VIII
2 (1911) 82 ff; cf. further O. Neugebauer and H.B. van Hoesen, Greek Horoscopes
(Philadelphia 1959) 90 ff; Martin, Providentia (1982) 291 ff.
8 Greppo, Memoire (1842) 46. The other works cited in this chapter but not referred
to in the Notes will be found in the Bibliography.
9 H. Dessau, 'Uber Zeit und Personlichkeit der Scriptores Historiae Augustae ^ Hermes
24 (1889) 337-92.
10 Note, for example, Perowne, Hadrian (1960) - entirely without footnotes, marred
by a number of errors, and not otherwise adding anything to Henderson.
Contributions on Hadrian by W. Weber subsequent to his excellent Hadrianus of
1907 (based on his doctoral dissertation and published when the author was still very
young - he was born in 1882), e.g. in the Cambridge Ancient History'XI (1936) and
(the same in German) Rom: Herrschertum und Reich im 2. Jhdt. (Stuttgart 1937),
were not a success. M.K. Thornton, 'Hadrian and his reign', ANRW 2.2 (1975)
432-76, is a rather limited bibliographical survey. Note now also M.A. Levi, Adriano
Augusto. Studi e ricerche (1993), and Adriano. Un ventennio di cambiamento (1994).
11 Apart from Grenier, MEFRA 101 (1989) 925-1019, I have drawn mainly on
Kahler, Villa (1950; now of course outdated in part) and the helpful survey by
Boatwright, in her City (1987) 138 ff. I have not seen W.L. MacDonald and J.A.
Pinto, Hadrian's Villa and its Legacy (New Haven 1995).
12 To save space, I have not listed these papers individually in the Bibliography, since
all have been republished, either in his Roman Papers I-VI or in other volumes.
Original publication details are supplied in the notes. A MSS memo in the Syme
Archive at Wolfson College indicates that he had contemplated reprinting a selection
in a volume of Hadrianic papers.
13 The Quebec periodical, Cahiers d'etudes anciennes, devoted a volume (21, 1988) to
Yourcenar on Hadrian. I found the paper by Bernier, CEA 21 (1988) 7-25, on the
genesis and literary fortune of the novel of considerable interest. The other contri-
butions were of lesser value. Syme was moved to publish a lecture, 'Fictional history
old and new: Hadrian', delivered in 1984 (Oxford 1986), reprinted in RPVl (1991)
157-81, in protest at the excessive credence given to Yourcenar's fiction. Cf. also
Bruggisser, Historiae Aug. Coll. n.s. 5 (forthcoming), for an interesting study of
Yourcenar's treatment of Hadrian (I am grateful to its author for allowing me to
consult his paper in typescript). Not least instructive is the intrusion of the
Yourcenarian Hadrian into scholarly works on Roman history.
14 HA Had. 26.1-3 has the basic description. That his beard was well-trimmed is clear
from the portraits, e.g. Wegner, Hadrian (1956) 8. Dio 69.2.62 speaks of his charm.
Polemo, De physiognomia 148, claims that his eyes were especially bright, Malalas
277 claims that they were blue or grey (no doubt invented, like the other descrip-
tive items on Roman emperors). On his character, cf. esp. Dio 69.3.2 ff., and HA
314
NOTES TO PAGES 9-16
Had. 14.9 ff., 15.10 ff, 20.1 ff, etc., discussed often enough in the pages that
follow. More detail on his character and beliefs (or speculations on the question),
and much more bibliography, in A.R. Birley, Laverna 5 (1994) 176 ff. ('Hadrian's
farewell to life'). I have not thought it worth referring in this book to my narrative
chapter, covering the years 117-92, delivered to the editors of Cambridge Ancient
History XI2 in 1988 ('forthcoming'). (In any case, as happens, I have changed my
mind on a number of matters there treated.)
CHAPTER 1 A C H I L D H O O D IN FLAVIAN ROME

1 HA Had. 1.2-3. There is no need to doubt that Rome was his birthplace: Syme,
'Hadrian and Italica', JRS 54 (1964) 142-9 = RPll (1979) 617 ff, at 142 = 617.
Italica was his origo or patria and he was registered in the tribe, Sergia, of that place.
- domicile: Talbert, Senate (1984) 40. - Dio: 69.3.1. - papyrus: PFayum 19 = Sm.
123; cf. further p. 299 and note 39, above. - father's death: HA Had. 11.4. -
praetorship: A.R. Birley, Fasti (1981) 14; Talbert 17 ff - daughter: HA Had. 11.2.
2 wet-nurse: CILXW 3721. - Gades: HA Had. 1.2; RE7A (1910) 439-61 (Hubner).
- Balbus: RE4.1 (1900) 1260-8 (Munzer). - 500 Gaditari: Strabo 3.5.3, p. 169. -
Domitii: cf. Syme, 'The Testament of Dasumius: some novelties', Chiron 15 (1985)
41-63 = RPV (1988) 521 ff, at 52 = 533, on a possible kinsman, Domitius Balbus
(Tacitus, Ann. 14.40.1).
3 Italica, Hadria: HA Had. 1.1; Appian, Iberica 38. - Marullinus: HA Had. 1.2. -
Ulpii, Trahii: Caballos Rufino, Senadores (1990) 309 (inscription of M. Trahius
Cf.), with further bibliography; id., Italica (1994) 67. - Tuder: Epit. de Caes. 13.1;
Syme, Tacitus (1958) 786.
4 cousin: HA Had. 1.2. - career of elder Trajan: Caballos Rufino, Senadores (1990)
305 ff.; Franke, Legionslegaten (1991) 191 ff. (with slightly differing views on the
career from 70-73). - Vettulenus: Syme, 'Antonine relatives: Ceionii and Vettuleni',
Athenaeum 35 (1957) 306-15 = RPl (1979) 325 ff - Marcii: Champlin, Athenaeum
71 (1983)251 ff.
5 olive plantations: p. 317 and note 7 below. - civil war: [Caesar], Bell. Alex. 52, 57;
Bell. Hisp. 25. - Galba: e.g. Syme, 'Partisans of Galba', Historia 31 (1982) 460-83
= RPW (1988) 115 ff - Vespasian: Sherwin-White, Roman Citizenship (2nd edn
1973) 252, 360 ff.
6 Asiaticus: Tacitus, Ann. 11.1.1—2. - Pedanius: Syme, 'Rival cities, notably Tarraco
and Barcino', Ktema 6 (1981) 271-85, at 282 = RP IV (1988) 89 f; Caballos
Rufino, Senadores (1990) 420 f. - Annii Veri: HA M. Ant. 1.2. - Agricola: Tacitus,
Agr. 9.1. - Domitii: ILS 990-1 = MW 299-300.
7 Tibur: Syme, Tacitus (1958) 602; 'Spaniards at Tivoli', Ancient Society 13/14
(1982-3) 241-63 = RP IV (1988) 94 ff. - praetorian career: A.R. Birley, Fasti
(1981) 15 ff. - Agricola: Tacitus, Agr. 9.1-5.
8 proconsuls, praetorian career: A.R. Birley, Fasti (1981) 17, 31 f, 15 ff. - Bassus: ILS
8797; Syme, 'Spanish Pomponii. A study in nomenclature', Gerion 1 (1983) 249-66
= RPW (1988) 140 ff, at 253 f. = 145 f. - Quadratus: 7Z58819, 8819a, AE1966.
463;7Y# ? J507.
9 On the early stages of Hellenisation at Rome: MacMullen, Historia 40 (1991) 419
ff; for the principate, Syme, Tacitus (1958) 504 ff. - dialogues: Plutarch, Mor. 71 IB
(a new fashion at Rome); cf. C P . Jones, Plutarch and Rome (1971), especially 20 ff.
- Quintilian: Inst. or. 1.1.12 f.
10 Vespasian's death and Hadrian's allegation: Dio 66.17.1.
11 disasters: e.g. Dio 66.21-4. - Titus' death: Dio 66.26.1-4. - Germanicus: B.W.
Jones, Domitian (1992) 128 ff. - Agricola: A.R. Birley, Fasti (1981) 73 ff.
315
NOTES TO PAGES 16-23
12 father's death, guardians: HA Had. 1.4. Attianus' age: Caballos Rufino, Senadores
(1990) 35 f. - Plotina, Matidia, Sabina: R.-C. nos. 631, 681, 802.
13 Scaurus: Pliny, Ep. 5.12; HA Verus 2.5; A. Gellius, N. Att. 11.15.3; cf. RE 5A.\
(1934) 672-6. The link with Scaurianus is suggested by E. Groag, ibid. 671.
Sherwin-White's note on Pliny's correspondent, Commentary (1966) 339, is not
helpful. S. Fein, Die Beziehungen der Kaiser Trajan und Hadrian zu den Litterati
(Stuttgart-Leipzig 1994 - a useful work) 30, doubts that Scaurus taught Hadrian,
but does not disprove it. — favourite authors: HA Had. 16.6. - Quintilian: Inst. or.
2.5.21 ff.
14 HA Had. 1.5; Epit. de Caes. 14.2; cf. Juvenal 3.78. - archon: IG II2 1996 = MW
121.
15 Building: B.W. Jones, Domitian (1992) 79 ff. - fortunes: itesupp. 15 (1978) 1514
ff. - architecture: Dio 69.4.1-5. - cithara: HA Had. 14.9, cf. Quintilian, Inst. or.
10.15.3.
16 B.W. Jones, Domitian (1992) 138 ff. - Funisulanus: Caballos Rufino, Senadores
(1990) 146 ff. - Nigrinus: id. 103 ff. Saecular Games: Jones 102 f.
17 Saturninus: B.W. Jones, Domitian (1992) 144 f. - Arvals: MW 15. - Trajan: Pliny,
Pan. 14.
18 further expedition: B.W. Jones, Domitian (1992) 150 f. - Arvals: MW 14. - false
Nero: Suetonius Nero 57.2. - Vettulenus: Suetonius Dom. 10.2. On both, B.W.
Jones, 'C. Vettulenus Civica Cerealis and the "false Nero" of AD 88', Athenaeum 61
(1983) 516-21.
19 double triumph: Suetonius, Dom. 6.1; B.W. Jones, Domitian 150 f. - months:
Suetonius, Dom. 13.3; Talbert, Senate (1984) 361 f. - Nerva: Syme, Tacitus (1958)
1 ff., 627 ff. - Servianus: Syme, Chiron 15 (1985) 47 = RPV 528, and elsewhere.
- Rusticus: Syme, 'Antistius Rusticus, a consular from Corduba', Historia 22 (1983)
359-74 = RPW (1988) 278 ff. - Pusio: id. 367 = 287; Caballos Rufino, Senadores
(1990) 110 ff.
20 Italica: HA Had. 2.1; Syme, JRS 54 (1964) 142 = RPW (1979) 647. - poisoning:
Dio 67.11.6. Cf. Syme, Some Arval Brethren (Oxford 1980) 21 ff.; RPVLl 564. -
Fulvus: HA Ant. Pius 1.6. - Violentilla: Statius, Silv. 1.2.138, 168. - Quintilian's
young wife and sons: Inst. or. 6 praef. — Martial 7.A7 (Licinius Sura). - Servianus:
HA Had. 1.2; Syme, 'More Narbonensian senators', ZPE 65 (1986) 1-14 = RPVl
(1991) 209 ff, at 16 = 224 and n. 115.
21 Nero: Tacitus, Ann. 12.41. - M. Aurelius: HA M. Ant. 4.5. Cf. RE 6A.2 (1937)
1450 ff
CHAPTER 2 T H E OLD D O M I N I O N
1 Caballos Rufino, Itdlica (1994) 15 ff. - Divisions of Spain: Strabo 3.4.20, 166.
There is now an extensive (and recent) literature on Roman Spain, not least Baetica.
I have confined citation to what I have relied on. But I add a reference to the
section 'Spain', by G. Alfoldy (composed in 1987 and revised in 1988; the author
was not permitted further revision), Chapter 13c of Cambridge Ancient History, vol.
X. The Augustan Empire, 43 BC-AD 6% 2nd edn (Cambridge 1996) 449-63.
2 Strabo 17.3.25, 840; Dio 53.12.1 ff, especially 4 f; cf. Alfoldy, Fasti (1969) 149
ff; Griffin, JRS 62 (1972) 1 ff; Caballos Rufino, Itdlica (1994) 33 ff.
3 Strabo 3.2.4, 142; 3.2.6, 144; 3.2.8, 146; 3.2.14, 151.
4 Griffin, JRS62 (1972) 1 ff. - ten thousand: cf. [Caesar], Bell. Alex. 50, 53, 56; P.A.
Brunt, Italian Manpower (Oxford 1980) 208, 230 f. - towers: [Caesar], Bell. Hisp.
8. - Caballos Rufino, Itdlica (1994) 57 ff. - Turdetanians: Strabo 3.2.15, 151.
5 poets: Cicero, Pro Archia 26. - Sextilius Ena: Seneca, Suas. 6.27. - elder Seneca:
316
NOTES TO PAGES 23-8
Griffin, JRS62 (1972) 4 ff. - Latro: PIR1 P 638. - Gallic: PIR2 J 756. - Silo: PIR2
G 111. — Turrinus: Seneca, Contr. 10 praef. 14-16. - other Augustan writers: Syme,
RP VII 466 ff. - Quintilian's origin is known only from Jerome, Chron. p. 190
Helm, not from his own work. Martial refers to his native Bilbilis often.
6 HA Had. 2.1. - collegium iuvenum: Gray, Smith Coll. Stud. 4 (1919) 155, plausibly
interprets 'statim militiam iniit' this way; accepted without reference to Gray by
Benario, Commentary (1980) 46; reported without comment by M. Jaczynowska, Les
associations de la jeunesse romaine sous le Haut-Empire (Wroclaw 1978) 54 f, but
nowhere mentioned by P. Ginestet, Les organisations de la jeunesse dans VOccident
romain (Brussels 1991) (the fullest study of the iuvenes, but playing down the mili-
tary aspect). - Mactaris: AE 1958. 172. - Apuleius, Met. 2.18, cf. Dig. 48.19.28.3.
7 great-uncle: HA Had. 2.1 - Massa: Tacitus, Agr. 45.1; Pliny, Ep. 3.4.4; 6.29.8;
7.33.4-8; Eck, Chiron 12 (1982) 319, regards 91-2 as the probable term of office.
- estates: Caballos Rufino, Senadores (1990) 42 and note 28, with further references.
8 Martial 12 praef. - Mummius: ILS 21d (Caballos Rufino, Itdlica (1990) 34 f,
reports an alternative, but not necessarily proven, restoration by A.M. Canto of this
fragmentary text); for his conduct over the booty, e.g. Pliny, NH35.24; De vir. ill.
60.3, cf. RE 16.1 (1933) 1195-1206 (Miinzer). - Nepos: A.R. Birley, Fasti (1981)
100 ff; Caballos Rufino, Senadores (1990) 249 ff. - Papus: PIR2 M 524; Caballos
Rufino, Senadores (1990) 217 ff
9 HA Had. 2.1. - Spanish game: Strabo 3.2.6, 144-5; 3.4.15, 163; Pliny, NH8.W7;
Martial 1.49; 10.37. - appetite: Fronto, De feriis Alsiensibus 5, p. 230 van den Hout,
described Hadrian as a good trencherman, prandiorum opimorum esorem optimum,
Dio, 69.7.3, also testifies to his healthy appetite. - tetrafarmacum: HA Had. 21 A,
cf. Ael. 5.5, Sev. Alex. 30.6, discussed by Cazzaniga, in: Poesia lat. in frammenti
(1974) 359 ff (whose restoration of the text is not entirely followed here).
10 Trajan: Pliny, Pan. 81.1 ff - Pliny, Ep. 1.6, 9.10. - Sertorius: Plutarch Sert. 13. -
Latro: Seneca Contr. 1 praef.- Seneca, De vita beata 14.2. - Martial: cf. note 9 above.
11 HA Had. 2.2. - Glabrio: PIR2 A 67.
12 Quintilian: PIR2 F 59.
CHAPTER 3 MILITARY T R I B U N E
1 Tacitus away: Tacitus, Agr. 45.5. - Sura: Martial 1.49.40; 6.64.10 ff. Sura's origin:
Syme, Tacitus (1958) 791; id., 'Rival cities, notably Tarraco and Barcino', Ktema 6
(1981) 271-85 = RPW (1988) 74 ff, at 276 = 81 f; id., 'Hadrian's autobiography:
Servianus and Sura', BHAC 1986/89 (1991) 189-200 = RP VI (1991) 398 ff, at
193 = 401 - Sura a friend of Trajan: Dio 68.15.4 ff; Victor, Caes. 13.8; Epit. de
Caes. 13.6; cf. HA Had. 2.10, 3.10.
2 eight months: Martial 9.31.3. - Pannonia: argued by Fitz, Verwaltungl (1993) 162
ff, based mainly on Pliny, Pan. 14.5 (cf. note 12 below). - XXI Rapax: Suetonius,
Dom. 6.1; RE 12.2 (1925) 1789. - Statius, Silv. 33.171. Martial 8 praef, 8.8.5 f;
8.11.7; 8.54.3 f. - Cf. on this period, Syme, 'Domitian: the last years', Chiron 13
(1983) 121-46 = RPW (1988) 252 ff.
3 Martial 9.6 and 8, cf. Dio 67.2.3, Suetonius, Dom. 7.1; 9.11.13, 16-17, 36. Statius,
Silv. 3Ay cf. 2.1, 2.6; 4.3.13 ff. - boys: Martial 9.103 praises the beautiful twins
Hierus and Asylus, owner not named (it was Claudius Livianus, later Trajan's Guard
Prefect: CIL VI 280 (= 30728); ^£1924. 15). - Quintilian: Inst. or. 1.2.2, 4; 1.3.17.
MacMullen, Historia 31 (1982) 484ffi, is instructive on the topic.
4 Massa: note 6, p. 317 above. - the opposition: Syme, RP VII (1991) 568 ff. -
entitled to attend Senate: according to Suetonius D. Aug. 38.2, Augustus allowed
senators' sons to be present.
317
5 Tacitus, Agr. 45.1. - Dasumius: Syme, Chiron 15 (1985) 41 f. = RP V (1988) 522
f.; PIR2 H 5. - Tacitus: Tacitus, Agr. 41.2-42.4. - Senecio: Dio 67.13.2; PIR2 H
128.
6 Trajan's remark: HA Sev. Alex. 65 A f. (a bogus story according to Syme, Ammianus
and the Historia Augusta (Oxford 1968) 170, 186; Emperors and Biography (Oxford
1971) 97, 108; Historia Augusta Papers (1983) 23, 41 f.). - vigintivirate: A.R. Birley,
Fasti (1981) 4 ff. - Nepos: id. 100 ff.
7 The post of Xvir. HA Had. 2.2; also known from ILS 308 = Sm. 109, the Athens
inscription. - Pliny: ILS 2927 = Sm. 230; Ep. 1.18.3; 5.8.8; 5.1.
8 RE4.2 (1901) 2260 ff. - attendants etc.: e.g. ILS 1900, 1909, 1911, 1938. - praef.
fer.: ILS 308 = Sm. 109. - feriae: RE 6.2 (1909) 2213-16. - Lollius: PIR2 L 320. -
Quadratus: PIR2 J 507; Syme, 'Hadrian and the Senate', Athenaeum 62 (1984)
31-60 = RPW (1988) 295 ff., at 45 = 310, suggests his involvement.
9 transvectio: RE 6A.2 (1937) 2178-87. - sevirr. ibid. 2A.2 (1923) 2018. - Athens:
7Z5 308 = Sm. 109. - Statius: Silv. 4.2.22 ff, 32 f, 40 ff.
10 Suetonius, Dom. 14.4; Dio 67.9.1 ff.
11 Glabrio: Dio 67.14.3; Suetonius, Dom. 10.2. - Clemens: Suetonius, Dom. 15.1; Dio
67.14.1 f. - unhappy lot: Suetonius Dom. 21.
12 tribunate: A.R. Birley, Fasti (1981) 8 ff. - Trajan: Pliny, Pan. 14.1, 15.1-2. -
Trajan's position: Syme, 'Hadrian in Moesia', Arheolski Vestnik 19 (1968) 101-9 =
Danubian Papers (1971) 204-12, assuming that II Adiutrix was then in Moesia
Superior, argued that Trajan was governor of that province. It is now clear that the
legion was already at Aquincum in Pannonia (see next note). Fitz, Verwaltung I
(1993) 162 ff., argues that Trajan was governor of Pannonia in 95. This remains, of
course, hypothesis, neither provable nor disprovable, but at least plausible, in my
view, given Pliny, Pan. 14.5 {cum aliis super alias expeditionibus itinere illo dignus
invenireris).
13 II Adiutrix until 86: RE 12.2 (1925) 1437-43. To Aquincum in 89: Strobel,
Dakerkriege (1984) 88; Fitz, Verwaltungl (1993) 163; Nemeth, in Hajnoczi (ed.),
Pannonia (1994) 141.
14 Conscientious tribunes: Tacitus, Agr. 5.1; Pliny, Pan. 15.1.
15 HA Had. 10.2 (diet), 17.8, 20.1 (accessibility), 20.7-10 (memory), 14.10 (military
skills). - Turbo: AE 1948.202. On Turbo: Syme, 'The wrong Marcius Turbo', JRS
52 (1962) 87-96 = RP II (1979) 541 ff; 'More trouble about Turbo', BHAC
1979/81 (1983) 303-19 = Historia Augusta Papers (1983) 168 ff.; CP no. 94;
Dobson, Primipilares (1978) no. 107 (still relying on Ritterling, RE 12.2 (1925)
1445 f., for the date when II Adiutrix came to Aquincum); Fitz, Verwaltungl (1993)
339 ff.
16 HA Had. 2.3; ILS308 = Sm. 109. - Iul. Mar[ ]: CILXVl 41; Eck, Chiron 12 (1982)
324; Strobel, in Knape and Strobel, Deutung von Geschichte (1985) 51 ff., prefers to
identify the governor with (Ti.) Jul(ius Candidus) Mar(ius Celsus) {PIR2] 241); not
impossible, if not entirely plausible.
17 B.W. Jones, Domitian (1992) 193 ff. The main sources: Suetonius, Dom. 17, 23;
Dio 67.15-16; 68.1 f.; Philostratus V. soph. 1.2.
18 Syme, Tacitus (1958) 1 ff, 627 ff.
CHAPTER 4 PRINCIPATUS ET LIBERTAS

1 Sources for the reign of Nerva are excerpted in A.R. Birley, Lives of the Later Caesars
(1976) 29-37. - Verginius: Pliny, Ep. 2.1.4 f. - Antoninus: Epit. de Caes. 12.2-3;
PIR2 A 1086. - Frontinus: J 322. - Corellius: C 1294. - Pliny, Ep. 9.13.2 ff.
2 Pliny, Ep. 9.13.6 ff. - army commander: identified as M. Cornelius Nigrinus by
318
Alfoldy and Halfmann, Chiron 3 (1973) 331-73 = Alfoldy, Rbmische Heeresgeschichte
(1987) 153 ff.; generally accepted, cf. e.g. Caballos Rufino, Senadores (1990) 103 ff.
- dismissals and replacements: Syme, Tacitus (1958) 631, is the classic analysis;
lengthy discussion in Schwarte, BJ 179 (1979) 147 ff.; Strobel, in Knape and
Strobel, Deutung von Geschichte (1985), especially 41 ff., both stressing the key role
of the Guard Prefect Casperius Aelianus. - Capitol: Pliny, Pan. 5.2-4.
3 Verginius: Pliny, Ep. 2.1.1-6; 6.10. - Tacitus, Agr. 3.2, 3.1.
4 mutiny: Pliny, Pan. 6.1 ff., 8.1-3; Dio 68.3. 3 f.; Epit. de Caes. 12.6-8. Discussed
at length by Strobel, in Knape and Strobel, Deutung von Geschichte (1985) 9 ff.
5 Dio 68.4.1 f; Epit. de Caes. 13.6; Pliny, Pan. 7.6.-Frontinus and Ursus: Pliny, Pan.
60.6 (not named). Frontinus was cos. Ill ord.^ Ursus cos. Ill suff, in 100, EO2 93 f.
- Agricola: Tacitus, Agr. 44.5.
6 HA Had. 2.5-6.
7 HA Had. 2.6; ILS 308 = Sm. 109. - one other case: L. Minicius Natalis jr. {PIR2 M
620). - Trajan's move: Eck, Statthalter (1985) 45 ff. - fifteen years later: HA Had.
10.2 ff, cf. pp. 117 f. above. - horses and dogs: cf. Pliny's story about an extrava-
gant young man: Ep. 9.12. - new system: Schonberger, JRS 59 (1969) 158 ff; Ber.
der rom-germ. Komm. 66 (1985) 368 ff. - Avitus: Pliny, Ep. 8.23.5.
8 Dio 68.4.2; Epit. de Caes. 13.3; HA Had. 2.6.
9 favour: HA Had. 2.7. - deification: Pliny, Pan. 11.1 ff. - Mausoleum: Epit. de Caes.
12.12. - letter: Dio 68.5.2. - Frontinus, Ursus: EO2 45. - Palma: PIR2 C 1412. -
Senecio: C.P. Jones, 'Sura and Senecio',/7?560 (1970) 98-104. - A n important new
document, a military diploma of AD 98 for the army of Lower Germany, was to have
been published by the late Jules Bogaers. It was issued when Trajan was already
Emperor but - exceptionally - still named as the commanding general of the
auxiliary units. It must be hoped that a text will soon become available.
10 Casperius: Dio 68.5.4, cf. Strobel, in Knape and Strobel, Deutung von Geschichte
(1985) 27 ff., 37 ff., 44. - Suburanus: Pliny, Pan. 67.8; Dio 68.16.1-2; Victor, Caes.
13.9; CP no. 56; Syme, Tacitus (1958) 56. As Werner Eck points out to me,
Suburanus may have been made Guard Prefect of Trajan as new Caesar the previous
autumn. - Horse Guards: Speidel, Riding for Caesar (1994) 15 ff., 38 ff. - Capito:
PIR2 O 62.
11 Pliny, Ep. 10.1, 10.2.
12 Tacitus, Agr. 39.1. - his father: assumed to be the man in Pliny, NH7.76. - Tacitus,
Germ. 37.2-5.
13 move to Danube: Pliny, Pan. 12 f. - Servianus, Avitus: Pliny, Ep. 8.23.5; Eck,
Chiron 12 (1982) 332. - Pliny, Pan. 12-13, 20-24. - Plotina: Dio 68.5.5.
14 HA Had. 2.7-9. - boys, wine: Dio 68.7.4. - oracle: discussed by Michelotto, Rend.
1st. Lomh. 113 (1979) 324 ff.
15 Sura: HA Had. 2.10; Dio 68.15.4-6; Julian, Caes. 327'A. - Frontinus: PIR2 J 322.
- Sabina: HA Had. 2.10. - Matidia: PIR2 M 367.
16 quaestor: A.R. Birley, Fasti (1981) 12 ff. - Vllvir. 715308 = Sm. 109. Schumacher,
Priesterkollegien (1973) 116 f, assumes that Hadrian gained his priesthoods after the
consulship. Syme, 'A dozen early priesthoods', ZPE 77 (1989) 241-59 = RP VI
(1991) 421 ff, discusses cases when the distinction came much earlier in the sena-
torial career.
17 Pliny, Ep. 4.8.3. - Marius Priscus: ibid. 2.11.12. - Sabinus: CILX1 8020; C7ZXIV
3579. Cf. Schumacher, Priesterkollegien (1973) 111 f. - Pliny, Ep. 10.13.
18 Schumacher, Priesterkollegien (1973) 108 ff., nos. D 12, 14, 11, 20 (to be revised by
PIR2 N 60), 3.
19 attendance: Suetonius, D. Aug. 38.2. - instalments: Pliny, Ep. 3.18.4. - aim: ibid.
3.18.2 f, Pan. 4.1 - Dio of Prusa, Or. 1.
20 HA Had. 3.1. - Isaeus: IG ll/lll2 3632, 3709; Pliny, Ep. 2.3.
319
21 HA Had. 3.2. It seems difficult to date Hadrian's responsibility for the senatorial
record any later; if he had this duty while quaestor, it was exceptional. - Tacitus' use
of the Acta: Syme, Tacitus (1958) 186 f, 278 ff, 295 f
22 25 March: the Arvals sacrificed for his victory and return on this day, Sm. 1. - comes-.
ILS 308 = Sm. 109. - On the Dacians and the war, Strobel, Dakerkriege (1984),
especially 56 ff, 155 ff, is the fullest modern account.
23 HA Had. 3.2-3.
24 This is essentially the solution of Alfoldy, Legionslegaten (1967) 23 f. The alternative,
as argued against Alfoldy by Barnes, Sources of the HA (1978) 33, 41 f, is unsatis-
factory: to accept the date 105 for the tribunate and to amend Subsurano bis et
Serviano iterum for his praetorship to Sura ter et Senecione iterum, giving the year
107. This would mean that Hadrian's career was retarded rather than accelerated
- hardly plausible.
25 Servianus: Pliny, Ep. 3.17; PIR2 J 631. - Livianus: C 913. - Lusius: L 439. -
Laberius: L 9. - On the war, Dio 68.9.1-10.2; Strobel, Dakerkriege (1984) 162 ff,
and its results, 202 ff.
26 Senecio (Caballos Rufino, Senadores (1990) 295 ff. - but his Spanish origin is only
a guess) and Livianus (PIR2 C 913) are explicitly called Hadrian's friends in HA Had.
4.2. - Falco: A.R. Birley, Fasti (1981) 95 ff; for his origin (Sicilian), Salomies,
Adoptive Nomenclature (1992) 121 ff. - Quadratus Bassus: PIR2 J 508. - Atilius: G
181; Syme, RP VII (1991) 629 ff - Cilnius: Schumacher, Priesterkollegien (1973)
112 f, cf Eck, Chiron 12 (1982) 332, note 205. - Apollodorus: PIR2A 922; Ridley,
Athenaeum 77 (1989) 551 ff.
27 HA Had 3.5. F. Kolb, 'Die Paenula in der Historia Augusta', BHAC 1971 (1974)
81-101, at 95-9, demonstrates that the story cannot be genuine as it stands.
28 Classicus: Pliny, Ep. 3.4, 3.9, 6.29. - Bassus, ibid. 4.9, 5.20, 6.29, 10.56-7. -voting
tablets: ibid. 4.25.
29 HA Had. 3.8. - Licinius Nepos: Pliny, Ep. 4.29, 5.4.2, 5.13.1, 6.5. - Nigrinus:
5.13.6.-Celsus: PIR2] 882.
30 infringing: Dio 68.10.3. - new legions: Syme, Danubian Papers (1971) 91; Strobel,
Dakerkriege 97 ff - 4 June: FO2 18 = 5m. 19. - HA Had 3.6; ILS 308 = Sm. 109.
CHAPTER 5 THE YOUNG GENERAL

1 I Minervia: RE 12.2 (1925) 1420 ff; Strobel, Dakerkriege (1984) 86 f, 203 note 8
(perhaps stationed in occupied south-west Dacia from 102 to 105). - deity: J.-L.
Giraud, 'Domitien et Minerve: une predilection imperiale', ANRW 2.17.1 (1981)
203-22.
2 On the second war, Strobel, Dakerkriegen 205 ff - bridge and opening of war: Dio
68.13.1-14.1. - deserters: 68.11.3. - Longinus: 68.12.1-5. - Pliny's prayer: Pan.
94.5. - Neratius: HA Had. 4.8; PIR2 N 60; Eck, Chiron 12 (1982) 330 note 195,
338 note 332.
3 On Priscus: R.A. Bauman, Lawyers and Politics. . . Augustus to Hadrian (Munich
1989) 194 ff; but his attempt to identify him with the Neratius who governed
Lycia-Pamphylia is totally misplaced: dikaiodotes in IGR III 1511 does not mean
'jurist'; it is simply a standard label for the governor in Lycia, cf. the cases in
Thomasson, Laterculil (1984) 276 ff, nos. 5, 10, 14, 15; no. 6 is clearly Neratius
Pansa. - Marcellus: PIR2 N 55. - Servianus: Dio 69.17.3, where Xiphilinus has
'Traianos', emended by Zonaras unjustifiably to 'Adrianos', cf. Michelotto, in Studi
Gatti(\987) 174.
4 In general, Strobel, Dakerkriege 211 ff. - CI. Maximus: AE 1969/70. 583; Speidel,
'The captor of Decebalus', JRS 60 (1970) 142-53 = id., Roman Army Studies I
320
NOTES TO PAGES 51-7
(Amsterdam 1984) 173 ff., with add., 408 f. - Gemonian steps: Sm. 21. -
Nabataean kingdom: Bowersock, Roman Arabia (1983) 76 ff. - mopping up, etc.:
Strobel, Dakerkriege 219 f; Piso, Fasti (1993) 4 ff.
5 Sabinus: Roxan III 148; Piso, Fasti (\993) 10 ff.; Pliny, Ep. 9.2, cf. 6.18. - col. Ulpia
Sarmizegethusa: CIL III 1443 = Sm. 479; Strobel, Dakerkriege 226 f. - settlers:
Eutropius 8.6.2. - spectacles: Dio 68.15.1; Sm. 21.
6 HA Had. 3.6-7; ILS308 = Sm. 109. - Sura: PIR2 L 253. - Senecio: Syme, Danubian
Papers (1971) 248 ff. = RP VI (1991) 145 ff. (originally published as 'Pliny and the
Dacian wars', Latomus 23 (1964) 750-9).
7 Division of Pannonia: Alfoldy, in Hajnoczi (ed.), Pannonia (1994) 30. - decisive
phase: Strobel, Dakerkriege 214 ff.
8 Jazyges: Mocsy, Pannonia (1974) 19 ff., 94 f.; Strobel, Dakerkriege 57 f., 205 notes
3-4. - HA Had. 3.9; Dio 68.10.3.
9 palace: Zsidi, in Hajnoczi (ed.), Pannonia (1994) 213; Poczy, ibid. 224-7.
10 HA Had. 3.9; cf. Tacitus, Agr. 9.4, HA Had. 13.10.
11 patronage: E. Birley, Roman Britain and the Roman Army (1953) especially 141 ff.,
repr. in id., Roman Army Papers (1988) 153 ff. - Falco: Pliny, Ep. 7.22. - Marcellus:
ibid. 3.8. - Clodius Sura: ILS 6725; PME C206. - Latro: CP no. 104 and add. -
Note also a former tribune of II Adiutrix (name unknown) who rose high under
Hadrian, AE 1976. 676; CP Supp. no. 109A.
12 Turbo: HA Had. 4.2; PIR2 M 249 (fuller bibliography, p. 318, note 15, above).
13 Gallus: PIR2 A 654. - Bradua: A 1298; A.R. Birley, Fasti (1981) 92 ff. - on the con-
sulship, ibid. 24 f. - HA Had. 3.10; CIL VI 2016.
14 in absentia: suggested by Barnes, Sources of the HA (1978) 42 note 43 (but in my
view for the wrong reasons). - Julius Maximus: CIL XVI 164; PIR2 J 426. -
'adopted': HA Had. 3.11. - Sura's death: PIR2 L 253; Syme, RPV (1988) 410, 486,
569. - Minicius: Syme, 'Hadrian and the senate', Athenaeum 62 (1984) 31-60 = RP
IV (1988) 295 ff, at 37 = 302. - speeches: Julian, Caes. 327B; HA Had. 3.11. -
Trajan's history: known only from a few words cited by the grammarian Priscian
6.13 (p. 205 Keil).
15 Pliny, Ep. 8.18.
16 Via Appia: CIL VI 10229; new fragment, AE 1976. 77 = 1978. 286. - Julia Paulina:
line 15 now gives her full name. - On the identification of the testator and other
details, I follow Syme, 'The Testamentum Dasumii: some novelties', Chiron 15
(1985) 41-63 = RP V (1988) 521 ff.
17 one of us: Pliny, Pan. 2.4. - Optimus: ibid. 2.7, 88.4. - wife, sister: Sm. 106. -
Marsyas: RE 14.2 (1930) 1993 f, cf. 1554 and Supp. 4 (1924) 504. The seal is a
further confirmation, not, it seems, previously exploited, that his mother was a
Marcia (assumed from his sister's name Marciana); cf. R.-C. no. 521. - looked stu-
pid: Syme, Tacitus (1958) 39. - Dio of Prusa: Philostratus, V. soph. 1.2. - alimenta:
Pliny, Pan. 27; Sm. 435-8; Epit. de Caes. 12.4. - land: Pliny, Ep. 6.19.4.
18 riches: Johannes Lydus, De mag. 2.28, as corrected by Carcopino, cf. Strobel,
Dakerkriege (1984) 221 f. - building: Pliny, Pan. 29.2; Dio 68.16.3; Sm. 374 ff; in
general, L. Richardson, A New Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome
(Baltimore-London 1992), e.g. 18 f. (Aqua Traiana), 175 ff. (Forum), 251 f.
(Mercati), 397 f. (Thermae). - Apollodorus: Dio 69.4.2.
19 Genitor: Pliny, Ep. 9.17. Tacitus: ibid. 7.20, 8.7, cf. 9.14. - unnamed author: ibid.
9.27. - Caninius: ibid. 8.4. - Capito: ibid. 8.12.
20 Senecio: RE 3A.2 (1927) 1188-92 (Groag); C.P. Jones, Plutarch and Rome (1971)
especially 54 ff. - Fundanus: Syme, RP VII (1971) 603 ff. - corrector: Pliny, Ep.
8.24.
21 Maximus: Halfmann, Senatoren (1979) 136 no. 40. - presence at Athens: ILS 308
= Sm. 109; HA Had. 19.1; Phlegon, FGrH257, fr. 36.xxv (cf. p. 322, note 12,
321
below). - Philopappus: Halfmann 131 ff. no. 36; PIR2 J 151; Baslez, DHA 18
(1992) 89
ff. - Parthian empire: e.g. Schippmann, Grundziige (1980) 59 f. - Pliny: his mission
is dated by Sherwin-White, Commentary (1966) 80 ff., to 109-111; Eck, Chiron 12
(1982) 349 f. note 275, prefers 110-12 (more convincingly).
CHAPTER 6 ARCHON AT ATHENS

1 Falco: A.R. Birley, Fasti (1981) 95 ff. - friends: HA Had. 4.2 (in the context of AD
113) lists Sosius Senecio, Aemilius Papus, Platorius Nepos, Claudius Livianus and
Marcius Turbo.
2 Epictetus: PIR2 E 74; Millar, JRS 55 (1965) 141 ff. - close terms: HA Had. 16.10.
3 Arrian: Wheeler, Flavins Arrianus (1977) 1 ff.; Syme, 'The career of Arrian', Harvard
Studies in Classical Philology 86 (1982) 181-211 = RPIV (1988) 21 ff. - house of
Quadratus: Epictetus, 3.23.23. - twice consul: 4.1.53.
4 annona: Epictetus, 1.10.2-8. - Maximus: 3.7. - procurator-governor of Epirus: 3.4;
identified with Cn. Cornelius Pulcher {PIR2 C 1424) e.g. by Syme, RP IV 26. -
worthlessness of preferment: e.g. Epictetus, 1.19.17 ff., 4.1.45 ff, 4.7.21 ff; cf. HA
Had 20.1. - kinship, adoption: Epictetus, 1.9.7, 1.3.1, cf. Millar, JRS 55 (1965)
143.
5 Epictetus, 1.25.15; 2.22.22; 3.13.9-13.
6 Epictetus, 1.16.9-14. - Dio, Or. 36.17; cf. Apollonius, Ep. 63, 76. - Hadrian's
beard: HA Had. 26.1. Walker, /Hist. Coll. 3 (1991) 265 ff, is illuminating on the
topic. Cf. also P. Zanker, Die Maske des Sokrates (Munich 1995), but his ch. 5, pp.
109-251, although called 'Hadrians Bart', does not have much on Hadrian; he does
not cite Walker (or quote Dio and Apollonius).
7 Ambracia . . . Leucas: Arrian, Anab. 2.16.5 f.; Indica 41.2-3. - his hunting: clear from
his Cyneg. - inscription: SIG3 827, emended by A. Plassart, Fouilles de Delphes III 4
(Paris 1970) no. 290 - Nigrinus' mission: Syme, RPW 24 £; Eck, Chiron 13 (1983)
187 note 479; Thomasson, Laterculil (1984) 193 no. 24. - father, uncle: Plutarch,
Mor. 478B, 487E, 548B, 632A; C.P. Jones, Plutarch and Rome (1971) 51 ff.
8 Senecio: Plutarch, Mor. 75B, 612C-E, 613C-D, 666D-E, etc.; Theseus 1.1;
Demosthenes 1.1, 31.4; C.P. Jones, Plutarch and Rome 54 ff. - Fundanus: Syme, RP
VII (1991) 603 ff. - Plutarch and Delphi: Jones 26, 43, etc.; Swain, Historia 40
(1991) 318 ff. - Hadrian may also have visited Coronea in Boeotia at this time, since
he was honoured by a statue there before becoming Emperor: IG VII 2879.
9 Philopappus: Plutarch, Mor. 48E, 628A-B; PIR2 J 151. - Balbilla: J 650.
10 Herculanus: Plutarch, Mor. 539A ('Herclanus' - not cited in PIR2 J 302); 546D-E.
The view taken here of the date of birth of Herculanus needs justifying (Antony
Spawforth, who takes a different view, ABSA 73 (1978) 249 ff., kindly drew my
attention to a number of difficulties, which I seek to resolve in 'Hadrian and Greek
senators', ZPE 116 (1997) 209 ff).
11 Dioscuri: IG V 1, 489, 971; PIR2 J 151; cf. Spawforth, ABSA 73 (1978) 249 ff. (on
his relations; but I differ on the chronology of his career, cf. previous note). - rise
of Greeks: Halfmann, Senatoren (1979) 71 ff.; Syme, RP IV (1988) 1 ff. - house of
Tullus Ruso: Fronto, Ad M. Caes. 3.2.1, p. 36 van den Hout.
12 Olympian Zeus: Strabo 9.1.6, p. 396; Vitruvius 7, praef. 17; IG Willi2 4099;
Suetonius, D. Aug. 60; cf. Kienast, Festschr. Lippold(1993) 202 = id., Kleine Schriften
(1994) 363. - deme Besa: Graindor, Athenes (1934) 14 note 1. - Trebellius: IG
II/III2 4193; AE 1947. 69. - Crispus: AE 1971. 436. - Domitian: IGll/lll2 1996
= MW 121. Cf. also p.321 note 21, above.
13 Tacitus: his proconsulate: Eck, Chiron 12 (1982) 353 note 289; Syme, Tacitus
322
(1958) 513, discussing Tacitus, Ann. 2.53, 55. - deified, Augusta: Sm. 22. Sabina's
great-grandfather, the elder Trajan, had also been deified: M. Durry, 'Sur Trajan
pere', in Les empereurs romains dEspagne (Paris 1965) 45-54 (deification shortly
before Trajan's departure for the east).
14 Sm. 22. - ex manubiis: A. Gellius, N. Att. 13.25.1. - column: Claridge, JRA 6
(1993) 5 ff., makes a good case for the decoration of the Column being of Hadrianic
date.
15 Parthia split: cf. e.g. Schippmann, Grundzuge (1980) 59 f. - Callidromus: Pliny, Ep.
10.74. - Axidares, etc.: Dio 68.17.1 ff. - young man: Pliny, Pan. 14.1. - profectio:
Arrian, Parthica fr. 35 (anniversary of adoption, which was three months before
Nerva's death, 27 January, Epit. de Caes. 12.9); Malalas 270 has 'October'; cf.
Lepper, Parthian War (1948) 28 ff. - Augustae: R.-C. nos. 631, 681. - Misenum
fleet, Turbo: OX XVI 60; AE 1955. 225.
CHAPTER 7 THE PARTHIAN WAR

1 Dio 68.17.2 f.
2 Details in Eck, Chiron 12 (1982) 353 ff. - Homullus: Pliny, Ep. 5.20.6, cf. 4.9.215;
also mentioned 6.19.3. - told Trajan: HA Sev. Alex. 65.5 (perhaps apocryphal, cf.
p. 318 note 6, above).
3 Senatorial governors: Eck, Chiron 12 (1982) 353 ff. - Nepos: A.R. Birley, Fasti
(1981) 103. He had command of the legion I Adiutrix in the Parthian expedition,
it may be assumed. - Falco: ibid. 99. - Prefects: Syme, 'Guard Prefects of Trajan
and Hadrian', JRS 70 (1980) 64-80 = RP III (1984) 1276 ff., at 66 f. = 1280 f. -
Egypt: Thomasson, Laterculi I (1984) 347 f. - friends: HA Had. 4.2.
4 Palma, Celsus, Senecio: Dio 68.17.2. - enemies: HA Had. 4.3. There is virtually no
evidence for Trajan's comites and it is purely my own speculation that Palma and
Celsus were among them. - Laberius: HA Had. 5.5. - Bruttius: Pliny, Ep. 7.3; AE
1950. 66; IRT 545; Syme, 'Praesens the friend of Hadrian', Studies I. Kajanto
(Helsinki 1985) 273-91 = RPV (1988) 563 ff., at 281 = 570. - Crassus: Dio 68.3.2;
68.16.2; HA Had. 5.5 f; PIR2 C 259.
5 Maximus: PIR2 J 426. - Catilius: Halfmann, Senatoren (1978) 133 ff., no. 38. -
Quietus: PIR2 L 439. - Hadrian: HA Had. 4.1 - not yet, however, in spite of claims
to the contrary, legate of Syria.
6 route: Dio 68.17.3; Malalas 11.3-4, p. 270. Longden,/#S21 (1931) 1 ff., declined
to accept Malalas' authority for dates, a particularly crucial matter as concerns the
earthquake (below and note 13). Although some new evidence has come to light, in
general Longden's chronology seems to me more acceptable than the alternative,
based on Malalas, which has now become canonical (cf. note 13, below).
7 Zeus Casius: Anth. Pal. 6.332; Arrian, Parth. fr. 36. - Heliopolis: Macrobius, Sat.
1.23.14.
8 not promising: Lightfoot, JRS 80 (1990) 115 f. - Abgar: Dio 68.18.1; Arrian, Parth.
fr. 45.
9 Satala, Arsamosata: Dio 68.19.2. - durbar: Dio 68.18.2. - kings: Eutropius 8.3.1;
Festus, Brev. 20; Arrian, Peripl. 11.2; Dio 68.19.2. - Amazaspus: IGR I 192. -
coinage: BMClll 115, 120, 222.
10 Dio 68.19.1-20.4. - rex: BMClll 103, 106. - killed: Fronto, Princ. hist. 18, p. 212
van den Hour, Eutropius 8.3.1.
11 Bruttius: Arrian, Parth. fr. 85; AE 1950. 66; IRT545. - Arrian: Johannes Lydus, De
mag. 3.53 = Arrian, Parth. fr. 6, cf. Wheeler, Flavius Arrianus (1977) 27 ff.; Syme,
'The career of Arrian', Harvard Studies in ClassicalPhilology'86 (1982) 181-211 = RP
IV (1988) 21 ff, at 187 f. = 27 f. - Quietus: Themistius, Or. 16.250. - submitting:
323
NOTES TO PAGES 71-6
Dio 68.18.3 b - 23.1. - Catilius: ILS1338 and add. = Sm. 197. - Haterius: ILS1338
= Sm. 262a. - false reports, Optimus: Dio 68.23.1-2.
12 Dio 68.21.1-3; 22.1-2; Arrian, Parth. fr. 46.
13 earthquake: Dio 68.24.1-25.6. - Hadrian: Malalas 11.15, p. 278. - Ignatius:
Malalas 11.10, p. 276. - Sunday 13 December: Malalas 174, defended at length by
Lepper, Parthian War (1948) 54 ff, 99 ff. Note the doubts of I. Henderson in her
review of Lepper, JRS 39 (1949) 121-4. - Pedo replaced: AE 1911. 95; 1949. 23;
EO2 48; O. Salomies, 'Zu Konsuln der Jahre 115, 135, 195 n. Chr.\ Arctos 23
(1989) 165-78. - Ignatius commemorated in the east on 20 December: ODCC2
688 f. In fact, 20 December was the anniversary of the translation of his remains to
Antioch: T. Camelot, Ignace dAntioche, Polycarpe de Smyrne, Lettres {Sources chreti-
ennes 10, 1969) 13. This is unlikely to have bothered Malalas. - In support of a date
for the earthquake early in 115 one may add the coins, BMC III 100, celebrating
Jupiter's protection of Trajan, assigned to spring 115 by Mattingly, ibid, lxxxii. In
favour of Lepper's (or Malalas') dating one might at first sight adduce the entry in
the Fasti Ostienses - not available to Lepper: [Id. Dec. terrae mjotusfuit, thus restored
and assigned to AD 115 by Vidman, EO2 48. But on inspection it is clear that
neither the exact positioning of the fragment nor its restoration are at all certain.
14 Dio 68.26.1-4. - acclamations (VIII-XI): Lepper, Parthian War (1948) 44 f. -
Quietus: Dio 68.22.2.
15 lead army: Dio 68.26.42. - Dura: Sm. 312. - Ozogardana: Ammianus Marcellinus,
24.2.3. - rioting: CPJ 435; cf. Barnes, JJS 36 (1985) 153 ff., for an important revi-
sion of the standard chronology of the Jewish diaspora revolt, showing that it began
only in spring 116.
16 planned . . . Ctesiphon: Dio 68.1-2. - daughters, throne: HA Had. 13.1.
17 Parthicus: Dio 68.28.2. - despatches: Sm. 23. - anniversary: Guey, REA 50 (1948)
60 ff. - coinage: BMC III 118 f., 221 f. - Assyria: Eutropius 8.3.2, 8.6.2; Festus,
Brev. 14, 20. Maricq, Syria 36 (1959) 257 ff., argued for the acceptance of these
statements and this localisation of the new province; against, Lightfoot, JRS 80
(1990) 121 ff., followed by Millar, Near East (1993) 101; but cf. Potter, ZPE 88
(1991) 282 f., defending Maricq's view. - barge: Arrian, Parth. fr. 67.
18 Persian Gulf: Dio 68.28.3-29.3. - despatches: Sm. 23. - Babylon: Dio 68.30.1.
19 rebellion: Dio 68.29.4. - Jewish uprising: Applebaum, Jews and Greeks (1979);
Barnes, JJS 36 (1985) 153 ff. - Armenia: Dio 75.9.6 (misplaced). - Maximus,
Quietus, Seleucia: Dio 68.30.1-3. - Parthamaspates: Dio 68.30.3.; BMC III 223 =
Sm. 51.
20 revolt: Dio 68.32.1-3; Eusebius, HE 4.2.3; Orosius 7.12.6; Sm. 59-60. - timing:
CPJ l60-408d. - legion defeated: CPJ438. - Memphis: CPJ439, cf. 520 and the
unpublished Oxyrhyncus papyrus discussed by Frankfurter, JJS 43 (1992) 208 ff. At
Oxyrhyncus a defeat of the Jews was still celebrated in the late second century: CPJ
450. - Turbo: Eusebius, HE 4.2.3-4. - Cyprus: ILS 9491 = Sm. 284.
21 Quietus: Eusebius, Chron. 219 Karst; HE 4.2.5; Jerome, Chron. 196e Helm. Cf.
Barnes,//S 36 (1985) 156 ff.
22 Dio 68.31.1-4.
23 determined: Dio 68.33.1. - Bassus: Habicht, Pergamon VIII 3 (1969) no. 21; PIR2
J 508; Strobel, in Festschr. Lauffer (1986) 942 ff.; Piso, Fasti (1993) 23 ff. - Syria:
Dio 69.1.1, 2.1; HA Had. 4.6. - Phlegon: FGrH 257, fr. 36 IX. - Daphne:
Ammianus Marcellinus, 22.12.8. - Zeus: HA Had. 2.9, cf. Michelotto, RIL 113
(1979) 324 ff. - enemies, second consulship: HA Had. 4.3-4. - Quietus: Dio
68.32.5; Eusebius, HE4.2.5.
24 rumours: HA Had. 4.5. - no further step: ibid. 4.8-9. - illness: Dio 68.33.1-3. -
On Trajan, J. Bennet, Trajan. The Perfect Prince (London 1997) (which I have not
yet been able to consult) will doubtless be found valuable on many aspects.
324
CHAPTER 8 T H E N E W RULER
1 letter, despatch: HA Had. 4.6-7. - dream: Dio 69.2.1. - donative: HA Had. 5.7.
2 97: cf. pp. 35 f. above. - stage-managed: Dio 69.1.1-2; HA Had. 4.10. Cf. Merten,
Festgabe Straub (1977) 247 ff.; Temporini, Frauen (1978) 142 ff.
3 Attianus: HA Had. 5.5-6. - Neratius: HA Had. 4.8, cf. pp. 50 f. above. - Servianus:
Dio 69.17.3 (Trajan in the version of Xiphilinus; Zonaras changed this to Hadrian,
misunderstanding the context, cf. Michelotto, in Studi C Gatti (1987) 174.)
4 Bruttius: AE 1950. 66; IRT 545; Syme, 'Praesens the friend of Hadrian', Studies
I Kajanto (Helsinki 1985) 273-91 = RP V (1988) 563 ff., at 278 f. = 568 f., 282
f. = 571 f. - Macer: Pliny, Ep. 3.5. - historian: Servius, ad Aen. 5.556; PIR2 B 20-1.
- Tacitus: Syme, Tacitus (1958) 465 ff.
5 evacuation: Fronto, Princ. hist. 11, p. 209 van den Hout; Eutropius 8.6.2; HA Had.
5.3, 9.1. - Parthamaspates: HA Had. 5.4 (wrong name). - Osrhoene: Drijvers,
ANRW2.8 (1977) 874 f. - Cato: HA Had. 5.3, cf. 16.6; Priscian, Gramm. 2.88.9.
6 HA Had. 5.8; PIR2 L 439.
7 Clementianus: CP \50bis (61) and add, Supp. p. 43; Alfoldy, Noricum (1974) 244,
dates his next but one post to c. 120. - Mauretania: HA Had. 5.2, 5.8, 6.6; Gutsfeld,
Nordafrika (1989) 88 ff. - deliverer: cf. Or. Sib. 5.46 ff., 8.50 ff., 12.164 ff., cf. M.
Hengel, 'Hadrians Politik gegeniiber Juden und Christen', Journal of the Ancient
Near Eastern Society 16/17 (1984/5) 153-82, at 155 ff. - rebuild Temple: Schurer,
Jewish Peoplel (1973) 535 ff; Schafer, Aufstand(1981) 29 ff.
8 Haterius, Hosidius: Scheid, College (1990) 384 ff. - Eudaemon: M. Aurelius, Med.
8.25; HAHad. 15.1; CP 110. - n e w Prefect: POxy 3781 (in post on 25 August 117).
- edict: Digest 27.1.6.8, cf. Bowersock, Sophists (1969) 30 ff. - Another possible
comes of Hadrian in 117-118 is C. Cilnius Proculus, cf. Halfmann, Itinera (1986)
249. He was a fellow-member of the Vllviri epulonum, Schumacher, Priesterkollegien
(1973) 112 f.
9 remains: HA Had. 5.9-10. - letter to senate: ibid. 6.1-2.
10 Traianopolis: Dio 68.33.2; Digest 50.15.1.11, discussed by Zahrnt, ZPE7X (1988)
245 ff.
11 Phaedimus: ILS 1792 = Sm. 176. The publication of this inscription by H. Dessau,
'Die Vorgange bei der Thronbesteigung Hadrians', in Festschrift H Kiepert (Berlin
1898) 85-91, spawned an extensive literature: cf. e.g. Weber, Hadrianus (1907) 40,
54; Henderson, Hadrian (1923) 35 f, for opposing views. Temporini, Frauen
(1978) 152 ff., has a useful summary of the debate. - propensities: Dio 68.7.4.
12 HA Had. 5.2, cf. Weber, Hadrianus (1907) 50. - Turbo: HA Had. 5.8.
13 Bassus: C. Habicht, Pergamon VIII 3 (1969) no. 21; PIR2} 508; Piso, Fasti (1993)
28; Strobel, Festschr. lauffer (1986) 942 ff, 947 ff. - armies sent ahead: HA Had.
6.6.
14 honours: HA Had. 6.3-4. - coins: BMClll 124, 237. Kienast, Kaisertabelle (2nd
edn 1996) 128-34, gives a helpful summary of Hadrian's reign; ibid. 32 f., he sup-
ports the view (which I share), against e.g. Follet, Athenes (1976) 48 ff., that Hadrian
renewed his trib. pot. on 10 December, i.e. that he was trib. pot. //from that day in
117.
15 beard: HA Had. 26.1, discussed above, p. 61.
16 PGiessen 3 = Sm. 519; den Boer, Ancient Society 6 (1975) 203 ff. - Orion: Suda, s.v.;
further, Phlegon, FGrH 257, fr. 23 (an Orion evidently wrote about Adria,
Hadrian's ultima origo).
17 coins: BMClll 245; cf. Syme, Tacitus (1958) 471 f., 771 ff.; Castritius, JNG 14
(1964) 89 ff.; Martin, Mel. Seston (1974) 327 ff.; Van den Broek, Myth (1972).
18 Catilius: HA Had. 5.10. - Daphne: Ammianus Marcellinus 22.12.8. - inscription:
CIL VI 5076, cf. Weber, Hadrianus (1907) 57 ff., followed e.g. by Halfmann,
Itinera (1986) 190, 194.
325
NOTES TO PAGES 83-9
19 IGR III 208 = Sm. 498.
20 Dionysus: IGR III 209 = SEGYl 58-9; dated to 117 by Halfmann, Itinera (1986)
195.
21 IGR IV 349 = Sm. 61 = Ol. 58B. - Bassus: Habicht, Pergamon VIII 3 (1969) no.
21; Wesch-Klein, Funus Publicum (1993) 32 f.
22 Falco: A.R. Birley, Fasti (1981) 95 ff. - Nepos: ibid. 103, improved by Eck, Chiron
12 (1982) 360 note 315; HA Had. 4.2, 15.2, 23.4.
23 conquests abandoned: Fronto, Princ. hist. 11, p. 209 van den Hout; Eutropius 8.6.2.
- bridge: Dio 68.13.6. - Strobel, Festschr. Lauffer (1986) 943, 952.
24 Fronto: see previous note.
25 wintered: Syme, Tacitus (1958) 243; 'Journeys of Hadrian', ZPE73 (1988) 159-70
= RPVI (1991) 346 ff, at 160 = 347, and elsewhere. Syme suggests, plausibly, that
Arrian may have been Hadrian's host. - honorary office: Robert, Bulletin de
Correspondence hellenique. 102 (1978) 522 ff. - Delphi: Ol. 62. - Astypalaea: IGR
IV 1013 c = Sm. 449a = Ol. 64.
26 Florus: HA Had. 16.3; cf. Nadel, RSA 12 (1982) 183. - V Macedonica: ibid. 2.2;
ILS 308 = Sm. 109; RE 12.2 (1925) 1575 f. - Piroboridava: R.O. Fink, 'Hunt's
Pridianum: British Museum Papyrus 2851', JRS 48 (1958) 102-16, cf. Syme, T h e
Lower Danube under Trajan', ibid. 49 (1959) 26-33; id., Danubian Papers (1971)
108, 133 f.; Strobel, Dakerkriege (1984) 54 f., 134; id., Festschr. Lauffer (1986) 923
f. - HA Had. 6.8.
27 ILS 852-3, Pola: he had probably been deposed and was living in exile at this
pleasant Adriatic city. - Borysthenes 'Alanus': CIL XII 112 = Sm. 520; Nadel, RSA
12 (1982) 181 ff
28 Turbo: HA Had. 6.7, 73; Roxan 121; PIR2 M 249. - Nigrinus: ILS 2417 = Sm.
192. See further below.
29 HA Had. 7.1; Dio 69.2.5.
30 HA Had. 7.1. For this interpretation, Premerstein, Attentat (1908) 9 ff, especially
15 f, here somewhat modified in the light of new evidence. It is conceivable that
Nigrinus was legate of Moesia Superior at the time of Bassus' death and had taken
over Dacia as well temporarily, cf. M. Claudius Fronto during the Marcomannic
wars, ILS 1097—8. The existence of Quadratus Bassus was then not known to
Premerstein, whose later attempt to interpret the Pergamum inscription, 'C. Iulius
Quadratus Bassus Klient des jiingeren Plinius und General Trajans' (Sitzungsberichte
der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschafien, phil.-hist. Abt. 1934, Heft 3), was not
a complete success, cf. Habicht, Pergamon VIII 3 (1969) 53 ff. Further,
Premerstein's use of Polemo's De physiognomia to cast light on the affair must also
be rejected (cf. below, p. 336, note 22). - Nigrinus' stepson: HA Had. 23.10, cf.
p. 289 above.
31 Faventia . . . a journey: HA Had. 7.2, cf. Ael. 2.8. - fall from power: HA Had. 4.3.
32 HA Had. 7.1-4; 9.3. The existence of a conspiracy is doubted by most modern
scholars, e.g. Syme, Tacitus (1958) 485, 599 ff, and frequently elsewhere.
33 Nigrinus: Pliny, Ep. 5.13.6, 5.20.6, cf. 7.6.2. - father and uncle: Plutarch, Mor.
478B, cf. 487E; 548B. - 'most admired': Plutarch, Loeb edn VII, p. 170. - Thrasea:
Pliny, Ep. 6.29.1.
34 attendance: Talbert, Senate (1984) 152 ff. - allusions: Cizek, Bull. Ass. G Bude 3
(1980) 279 ff, compares Tacitus, Ann. 16.16. Strack 42 note 40 and 52 f. note 58
found a variety of echoes in Tacitus, Ann. and Syme, Tacitus (1958) 482 ff,
compared the events of 117-18 with Tacitus, Ann. 1, on the 'first crime of the new
principate' (1.6.1), the adoption of Tiberius (1.7.7), and the four capaces imperii,
rivals of Tiberius who all came to a bad end (1.13.2-3). Temporini, Frauen (1978)
157 ff, has a useful resume of these and other contributions.
35 ILS 2417 = Sm. 192: his subsequent promotion is taken by Speidel, Guards (1978)
326
29 f., 88; id., Riding for Caesar (1994) 47 £, as corroborating the plot by Nigrinus.
Worth considering, if not wholly convincing. - younger Quietus: PIR2 A 1409; Eck,
Chiron 13 (1983) 162.
36 Dio 69.9.6; ILS255S = Sm. 336, as interpreted by Speidel, Ancient Society 22 (1991)
277 ff.
37 Philostratus, V. soph. 2.14.
38 ILS 1029 = Sm. 224; Roxan II 86; PIR2 M 619. As Werner Eck kindly informs me,
yet another new diploma shows that Natalis was already in Upper Pannonia in 112.
39 barbarians: Dio 69.9.6. - Mursa: Steph. Byz. 458 M; Mocsy, Pannonia (1974) 119;
Zahrnt, in Olshausen and Sonnabend, Hist. Geographie (1991) 469 ff., regarding it
as the last 'genuine' (as opposed to titular) colonia founded in the Danubian
provinces.
40 Mocsy, Pannonia (1974) 139 ff., 143 ff. has details on all these, except for
Halicanum (S. Soproni, 'Municipium Halicanum\ Folia Archaeologica 30 (1979)
91-8).
41 HA Had. 5.2. Falco: AE 1957. 336; A.R. Birley, Fasti (1981) 99 f.
42 new settlement: Piso, Fasti (1993) 30 ff, has the latest information. - Napoca: CIL
III 6254, 14465. - Drobeta: CIL III 6309 = 8129, etc. - Malva: colonia in CILYNl
144 of AD 230; but identified with Romula by Piso, Fasti (1993) 85 note 18; that
place was still a municipium under M. Aurelius, CIL III 753, etc.
43 HA Had. 6.7, 73; 9.4; PIR2 M 249.
44 HA Had. 9.4.
45 Eck, Festschr. Lippold (1993) 247 ff, convincingly reinterprets AE 1958. 189 =
1960. 152, as evidence for Turbo as Guard Prefect - probably in 118-19, although
he does not rule out a date later in the reign. - diploma: Roxan I 21.
46 Moesia Inferior: Eck, Chiron 13 (1983) 150 and note 338. - Pliny, Ep. 7.24, cf
6.11, 6.29, 9.13. - son-in-law: Syme, 'Ummidius Quadratus capax imperii, Harvard
Studies in Classical Philology 83 (1979) 287-310 = RP III (1984) 1158 ff., at 309 =
1177.
47 Mastor: Dio 69.22.2-3. - Borysthenes: CIL XII 1122 = Sm. 520.
CHAPTER 9 RETURN TO ROME

1 Fort. Red: BMC III 238, 248 f., 400, 403, 405. - Arvals: Sm. 6 (p. 22); for the date,
Weber, Hadrianus (1907) 81 ff.
2 BMC III 401 f, 404 f.
3 new consuls: Arval Acts, Sm. 6 (p. 21). - Barbarus: Thomasson, Laterculi I (1984)
396. - Bassus: Syme, 'Spanish Pomponii: a study in nomenclature', Gerion 1 (1983)
249-66 = RPW (1988) 140 ff, at 259 ff. = 152 ff. (discussing AE 1973. 200). -
Matidia cherished: CIL XIV 3579 = Sm. 114. - Servianus . . . deference: HA Had.
8.11.
4 Pliny, Pan. 22-3. - HA Had. 9.8, 20.1.
5 gold pieces: HA Had. 7.3. - Postumus: Tacitus, Ann. 1.6.1. - congiarium: HA Had.
73; BMC III 404.
6 Sm. 6 (p. 22), cf. Scheid, College (1990) 384 ff.
7 Tacitus, Agr. 45.1.
8 Dio 69.2.6. - HA Had. 7.4, cf. Dio 69.2.4. - Nerva: Dio 68.2.3.
9 Attianus: HA Had. 8.7, 9.3-4. - old man: born 5 April AD 40, if, as seems plausible,
Caballos Rufino, Senadores (1990) 35 f, is right in attributing to him the horoscope
in Hephaestio Thebanus 2.18.54-61; Epit. 4.26.44-51. - estates: ILS8999; CILXl
2607 (Elba); CIL XIV 3039 (Praeneste); Baetica: Caballos Rufino, Senadores 35 and
note 63. - Similis: Dio 69.19.2; HA Had. 9.5; Dobson, Primipilares (1978) no. 105.
327
10 Septicius: Pliny, Ep. 1.1. - Suetonius' career: known principally from AE 1953. 73
and HA Had. 11.3; cf. CP96. - Famous Mem cf. Wallace-Hadrill, Suetonius (1983)
30 ff. - dedicate: Johannes Lydus, De mag. 2.6. - Thurinus: Suetonius, D. Aug. 7.1.
11 signum: Sm. 6 (p. 20). - expansion: Suetonius, D. Aug. 21.2.
12 not well received: HA Had. 9.1-2. Note also Eutropius 8.6.1 (Traiani gloriae
invidens). - Cato: ibid. 5.3. - Suetonius, Nero 18 (etiam ex Britannia deducere
exercitum cogitavit, nee nisi verecundia, ne obtrectareparentis gloriae videretur, destitii),
looks like a sly hit at Hadrian's treatment of Trajan's Dacia, cf. Syme, 'The travels
of Suetonius Tranquillus', Hermes 109 (1981) 105-17 = RP III (1984) 1337 ff., at
112= 1343 f.
13 theatre: HA Had. 9.1-2. - plans: cf. above pp. I l l ff. - corn: Strack 63; BMC III
402, 405, 406.
14 HA Had. 6.5.
15 HA Had. 7.5.
16 arrears: HA Had. 7.6; Dio 69.8.1 2 ; monument: ILS 309 = Sm. 64a. - coins: BMC
III 417 = Sm. 64b. - relief: Plate 8 - economic activity: thus R.P. Duncan-Jones,
Structure and Scale in the Roman Economy (Cambridge 1990) 59 ff; 66 f.
17 HA Had. 7.7, 7.9, 3.8, 7.11.
18 HA Had. 7.8; Strack 59 f; BMC III 409; cf. Pliny, Pan. 27 A.
19 Strack 61 f; BMC III 409 f; 415; 418, 421.
20 ashes: Dio 69.2.3; cf. Wesch-Klein, Funus Publicum (1993) 111 ff. - Nerva: Epit.
de Caes. 12.12, cf. Dio 69.23.1. - triumph: HA Had. 6.3. - games: Dio 69.2.3. -
balsam: HA Had. 19.5. - Temple: Boatwright, City (1987) 74 ff. - Column:
Claridge, JRA 6 (1993) 5 ff, argues convincingly that the reliefs are of Hadrianic
date. - Cf. on Trajan's posthumous honours Kienast, Chiron 10 (1980) 391 ff. =
id., Kleine Schriften (1994) 503 ff. I am not persuaded by Kierdorf, Tyche 1 (1980)
147 ff, that the posthumous triumph had taken place in 117, before Hadrian's
return. HA Had. 6.3 (triumphum . . . recusavit ipse atque imaginem Traiani curru
triumphali vexit) surely implies Hadrian's personal participation.
21 games: HA Had. 7.12, 8.2; Dio 69.8.1 2 -2. - bread and games: Juvenal 10.81. -
indifferent: id. 11.201-4.
22 HA Had 19.8; Dio 69.6.1-2.
23 CP 95; PIR2H 29-30.
24 army commands: Eck, Chiron 13 (1983) 150 f - Latinianus: known from a new
diploma as legate of Pannonia Superior in 125: Eck and Roxan, in Frei-Stolba and
Speidel (eds) Festschr. Lieb (1995) 74 ff, hence possibly in Inferior by 119/120. -
Severus: ILS 1056 = Sm. 217; CIL XVI 68; Roxan I 47; A.R. Birley, Fasti (1981)
106 ff. - foremost: Dio 69.13.2.
25 Britain: cf. below and note 31. - strategusr. CP/443 = Sm. 58. - damage: ibid. 447,
449. - confiscation: ibid. 445, 448. - tax-alleviation (known from nine papyri):
Bonneau, Lefisc(l97l) 176 ff. - accusations: CP] 158a = Sm. 517.
26 consul: HA Had. 8.5. - Rusticus: Syme, 'The Testamentum Dasumii: some novel-
ties', Chiron 15 (1985) 41-63 = RPV (1988) 521 ff, at 62 = 544 (stemma), and
elsewhere. Dasumii are now attested at Italica: AE 1991. 1028 f; hence the family
may derive from there rather than Corduba. - Nepos: Eck, Chiron 13 (1983) 150
ff.
27 HA Had. 8.5-6, 9.7, Dio 69.7.1, HA Had. 8.8-10, 8.1, Dio 69.7.2-3.
28 HA Had 20.1; Dio 69.7.1-2; HA Had. 8.3.
29 HA Had. 8.4. Cf. Sm. 1 for the list of consuls.
30 Catilius: Halfmann, Senatoren (1979) no. 30, cf. no. 18, established his origin. -
dinner: Pliny, Ep. 3.12. - marriage: Syme, Chiron 15 (1985) = RPV (1988) 521 ff,
at 54 f. = 535 f - Servianus: HA Had. 8.11.
31 Fort, red: Strack 82 ff, 85 ff; BMClll 410, 412, 420, 273 (Hercules). - Britannia:
328
Toynbee 53 f; BMC III All. - Victory, etc.: BMClll 266 f., 418; 255 (Mars); 264
(Peace); 254 f (Jupiter); 259 (Rome). Note also the galley, 269 f. - Alexandria:
Vogt, Alex. Munzen (1924) I 97 f., II 42 f. - virtus'. BMClll All.
32 Campania: HA Had. 9.6, cf. Tacitus, Ann. 3.A73, 4.57.1, 58.2, discussed by Syme,
Tacitus (1958) 487 f., 524. - Tiberius' astrology: Tacitus, Ann. 6.10.1, cf. Syme,
Tacitus 51A f. - Hadrian's: HA Had. 16.7, Ael. 3.9.
33 Hellenic identity: cf. M. Leiwo, Neapolitana. A Study of Population and Language in
Graeco-Roman Naples (Helsinki 1994). - benefactions: HA Had. 9.6; cf. Boatwright,
Chiron 19 (1989) 252 ff, citing CIL X 4574 (Caiatia), 6652 (Antium), ILS 843
(Nemi). - demarch: HA Had. 19.1.
34 Ol. 62-3; 69.
35 HA Had. 20.7,20.9-11.
36 Sm. 333 = Ol. 70 (with alternative translation for 'gain credit'); discussed by
Williams,//tf66(1976)72f.
37 Digest 47.21.2; cf. Syme, 'Hadrian the intellectual', in Les Empereurs romains
dEspagne (1965) 243-53 = RPVl (1991) 103 ff., at 245 = 105, reading a little more
into it than Williams, JRS 66 (1976) 71 f. - Gentianus: ILS 1046 = Sm. 237a.
38 Euphrates: Dio 69.8.3; Pliny, Ep. 1.10; Philostratus, V. Apoll. 8.7.11. - Epictetus:
HA Had. 16.10, cf. Chapter 6, above. - Favorinus: cf. above, pp. 193 ff.
39 Sm. 7 (p. 23); CILXIV 3579 = Sm. 114.
40 Matidia: PIR2 M 367; R.-C. no. 681. - Sabina: Eck, in Festschr. Straub (1982) 227
ff; R.-C. no. 802. - coins: BMClll 281. - honours: HA Had. 9.9, 19.5. - Arvals:
Sm. 7 (p. 23).
41 Sm. 7. - Suetonius, D. Aug. 21.2.
42 Sm. 452 = Ol. 71.
43 Ol. 72.
44 Ol. 73 (the comment on Plotina's Greek style is by Oliver, p. 179). - Heliodorus:
HA Had. 16.10, cf. above, p. 182.
45 Sent. Hadr. 12.
46 Boatwright, City (1987) 58 ff., 74 ff.
47 RESupp. 15 (1978) 1494 ff. (M. Steinby).
48 HA Had. 19.9; Boatwright, City (1987) 43 ff.
49 Augustan: Boatwright, City (1987) 33 ff. - coins: Strack 102 ff; BMClll 282, 422,
423. - Numa: Zoepffel, Chiron 8 (1978) 391 ff. - pomerium: Boatwright 6A ff.;
Bellen, Forschungsmag. Mainz 1 (1986) 5 ff.
50 Temple: Kienast, Chiron 10 (1980) 400 ff. = id., Kleine Schriften (1994) 513 ff.;
Boatwright, City (1987) 99 ff. - Decrianus, Apollodorus: HA Had. 19.12-13.
51 Dio 69.4.1 ff., HA Had 15.9-11.
52 Strack 105 ff.; BMC III 278; cf. Beaujeu, Religion (1955) 128 ff.; Martin,
Providentia (1982) 278 ff.
C H A P T E R 10 TO THE GERMAN FRONTIER

1 proconsul m 121: Weber, Hadrianus (1907) 99, gives a list. - HA Had. 10.1.
2 Matidia: HA Had. 9.1 f. - coins: Toynbee 84 f; BMClll 491, 521-2, 531. 'Gallia'
stands, of course, for all four Gallic provinces.
3 Lugdunum: Halfmann, Itinera (1986) 197, regards this as probable, citing R.
Chevallier, ANRW1.3 (1975) 921 f, 926, for building work there under Hadrian.
Weber, Hadrianus (1907) 106, 108, assumes that he wintered in Germany. - snows:
Dio 69.9.4. - Turbo: PIR2 M 249 - assumed to have remained behind, as the other
prefect was with Hadrian. - Verus: PIR2 A 695. - M. Aurelius' birth: HA M. Aur.
1.5.
329
4 Empress, officials: HA Had. 11.3. - Bradua: 7Z5 8820; A.R. Birley, Fasti (1981) 92
ff. - Neratii: PIR2 N 55, 60. - Natalis: ILS 1061 = Sm. 225; PIR2 M 620. Tacitus'
comment, Ann. 4.57 f., about Tiberius' retinue when he set off 'at last' (for
Campania in AD 26) deserves mention here: it was restricted, only one senator, the
Guard Prefect (Sejanus) and one other knight, otherwise men of letters, not least
Greeks, whose conversation would provide relief (ceteri liberalibus studiis praediti,
ferme Graeci, quorum sermonibus levaretuf). Whether or not Tacitus had Hadrian in
mind when writing about Tiberius (why not?), the last category indeed had a place
in the comitatus of AD 122 - Septicius and Suetonius, for sure, ex officio, but also
representing Latin studia; perhaps Arrian was of the company as well.
5 Tacitus: Germ. 29.4. - Schonberger, JRS 59 (1969) 160 ff; Ber. der R-G-K 66
(1985) 369 ff.
6 HA Had. 12.6.
7 symbolic: Baatz, in Roman Frontier Studies 1969 (1974) 117 f, insists that there was
nothing fundamentally new about Hadrian's measure, merely a technical improve-
ment. But the symbolic value was surely immensely important, a finis after all,
despite Virgil, Aen. 1.279 f. - Tacitus: Ann. 4.32.1-2; 11.20.1-2.
8 converting: cf. note 5, above. - HA Had. 10.2.
9 HA Had. 10.2; 5.3 (Cato). - Scipio: Appian, Iberica 85-6. - Metellus: Sallust, Jug.
44-5.
10 HA Had. 10.2-5.
11 HA Had. 10.6-8. - Gracchus: Plutarch, Gracch. 5.1. - later sections: HA Had. 17.2,
20.10. Note also 21.9, on his generosity to the troops.
12 forts: HA Had. 10.6, also Dio 69.9.1; cf. Tacitus, Agr. 20.2. - stores: HA Had. 11.1.
13 Dio 69.9.1-4; Epit. de Caes. 14.10-11; Vegetius 1.8, 1.27; Arrian, Tact. 44.1. -
ranking of officers, viz. the creation of the militia quarta for the commanders of alae
milliariae. E. Birley, 'Promotions and transfers in the Roman army: senatorial and
equestrian officers', orig. in Carnuntum-Jb. 1957, 3-20 (in German), repr. in id.,
Roman Army Papers (1988) 93 ff, at 106.
14 Toynbee 126; BMC III 501 f, 496, 533 (mines), 502 (army).
15 Ovilava, Cetium: Alfoldy, Noricum (1974) 82. - met(alla): BMC III 533. - statue:
Wegner, Hadrian (1956) 33 and Taf. 12a. -Augsburg: Zahrnt, ZPE72 (1988) 179
f - Raetian army: BMC III 502. - Clementianus: CP 150 bis (60) and add., Supp.
p. 43; Alfoldy, Noricum (1974) 244, dates his service c. 120. - Censorius: CP97bis.
16 Arrian, Indike 4.15-16, often discussed. Cf. Grassl, Chiron 12 (1982) 250 ff, for a
plausible hypothesis about when Arrian might have been at the Inn (viz. in 122 with
Hadrian).
17 Auderienses: CIL XIII 7063, 7353. - Taunenses: ILS 7077, 7080, 7090, 7096. -
Mattiaci: CIL XIII 7061 ff, 7266, 7271, 7281, 7587. - Forum Hadriani: Tab.
Peut.; CIL III 4279. - Batavi: Tacitus, Germ. 29; Speidel, Riding for Caesar (1994).
- Tungri: M.-T. Raepsaet-Charlier, 'Municipium Tungrorum, Latomus 54 (1995)
361-9 (now conceding that the Tungri were in Germania Inferior, not Belgica).
18 Suetonius, Cal. 8; D. Claud. 1.2, cf. Tacitus, Ann. 2.8.1; Suetonius D.Tit. 4.1,
discussed by Syme, 'The travels of Suetonius Tranquillus', Hermes 109 (1981)
105-17 = RPlll (1984) 1337 ff, at 112 = 1343. - Nepos: C/ZXVI 69 = Sm. 347;
A.R. Birley, Fasti (1981) 100 ff.
19 Toynbee 86 ff; BMC III 345-6; Tacitus, Germ. 17.3; BMC III 500.
CHAPTER 11 HADRIAN'S WALL

1 HA Had 11.2. Halfmann, Itinera (1986) 190, 195 f, is confident about the
date.
330
2 HA Had 11.2-12.1; 15.3 (Florus). - coins: Toynbee 53 ff.; BMClll 490 (adventus),
498 (exercitus), 508 (Britannia), 425, 433 (exped. Aug.). The connection of the latter
with Britain is denied by Mattingly, ibid. pp. clxvi f., without good reason; cf. Strack
70 f. - Sabinus: ILS2726 = Sm. 276; CPno. 118 and add; A.R. Birley, Fasti (1981)
292 f. - Agrippa: ILS 2735 = Sm. 265; CP no. 120; Birley, Fasti 292 ff. - appeal:
Bowman-Thomas, Tabulae Vindolandenses II no. 344, cf. p. 135 and note 21 below.
3 HA Had 5.2; - Falco: A.R. Birley, Fasti (1981) 95 ff. - coins . . . 119: BMClll 412;
Strack 70 f; Toynbee 54. - Fronto, De bello Parthico 2, p. 221 van den Hout.
4 A.R. Birley, Fasti (1981) 220 ff.
5 CIL XVI 69 = Sm. 347. - Nepos: A.R. Birley, Fasti (1981) 100 ff. - Varro: ibid.
239 f. (and ILS 1047). - Laelianus: ibid. 273 f. (and ILS 1094+1100).
6 Sabina, Septicius, Suetonius: p. 139 and note 26 below. - Marcellus: PIR2 N55;
A.R. Birley, Fasti (1981) 87 ff. Pliny, Ep. 3.8. - Bradua: Birley, Fasti 92 ff. (on ILS
8824a).
7 HA Had. 11.2, 12.1. - Voorburg: above p. 121 and note 7.
8 Suetonius, D. Titus 4.1. ; cf. Syme, Tacitus (1958) 779; 'The travels of Suetonius
Tranquillus', Hermes 109 (1981) 112 = RPlll (1984) 1343. - Christians: Eusebius,
HE 4.8.6-9.3, on which the sceptical view of Nesselhauf, Hermes 104 (1976) 348
ff, seems to me the most convincing. For Granianus and Fundanus as proconsuls:
and for Fundanus' successor in Asia, Pompeius Falco, Eck, Chiron 13 (1983) 155
ff. — Suetonius with Pliny - inferred by Syme from Pliny, Ep. 10. 94.1. (Whether
or not one reads nunc instead of hunc, Pliny here indicates that he has got to know
Suetonius better.)
9 CILXVl 69 = Sm. 347. - Agrippa: CPno. 120; PMEM 5; A.R. Birley, Fasti (\98\)
292 ff. - Baienus: CPno. 126, PMEB 14; Birley, Fasti 307 f.
10 Stevens, Building of Hadrian s Wall (1966), 39, 62, argued that work on the Wall
began in 120; against, Breeze and Dobson, Hadrians Wall (3rd edn 1987) 64. For
details of the Wall and all its associated works: E. Birley, Research on Hadrian s Wall
(1961); Daniels (ed.), Bruce, Handbook (13th edn 1978); Breeze and Dobson;
Daniels (ed.), Eleventh Pilgrimage (1989); Breeze, in Maxfield and Dobson
(eds), Roman Frontier Studies 1989 (1991), 35 ff.; Crow, ibid. 44 ff, both with full
bibliography. Of other recent studies one may note: Dobson, Arch. Ael. 14 (1986)
1 ff; Wooliscroft, ibid. 17 (1989) 5 ff.; Mann, ibid. 18 (1990) 51 ff.; Maxfield, ibid.
18 (1990) 247 ff.; Hill, ibid. 19 (1991) 33 ff; Hill and Dobson, ibid. 20 (1992) 27
ff. Some further items are cited below.
11 II Adiutrix: Nemeth, in Hajnoczi (ed.), La Pannonia (1994) 141; and cf. p. 32
above. - surrender: Tacitus, Historia 2.1 (perdomita Britannia et statim missa). -
withdrawal: e.g. Salway, Roman Britain (1981) 165 f.
12 Haterius: ILS 1338 = Sm. 262a; CPno. 95; PMEH 1. -Anavionenses: A.L.F. Rivet
and C. Smith, The Place-Names of Roman Britain (London 1975) 249 f. Haterius'
presence in Britain c. AD 100 is now dated by an unpublished Vindolanda writing-
tablet, Inv. 93/1379, a letter from him to Flavius Genialis, referring inter al. to Coria
(Corbridge, cf. note 19). - 'enforced enrolment': Schonberger, JRS 59 (1969) 167;
D. Baatz, Kastell Hesselbach und andere Forschungen am Odenwald Limes (Berlin
1973) 54 ff., 71 ff, argues that the numerus-Y>2iSte\\e later known to have been occu-
pied by Brittones had already received these units as garrison by c. 100.
13 Bowman and Thomas, Tabulae Vindolandenses II (1994) nos. 164, 344.
14 RIB 1319-20. - Arrian, Indica 18.11; Diodorus 17. 104. - Oceanus and Tina coins:
thus Toynbee 139 f.; BMClll 257 f.; 390. - Roman Newcastle: E. Birley, Research
on Hadrian's Wall (1961) 161 ff. - bridge: Daniels (ed.), Bruce, Handbook (1978)
62.
15 Breeze and Dobson, Hadrians Wall27 ff., 73.
16 RIB 1051. For this interpretation (as the text of a speech by Hadrian), Cantarelli,
331
Studi e doc. di storia e diritto 19 (1898) 132 f. (subsequently rather neglected). Other
views: E. Birley, Research on Hadrian's Wall(1961) 159.
17 Frontinus, De aquis 2.123. - plaster... Dionysius (Diodorus 14.18): Crow,
Britannia!! (1991) 58 f. - Hadria: Phlegon, Olympiads, FGrH257, fir. 23. (He also
mentions an alternative founder, Adrius the Messapian, son of Pauso.) Hadria (Atri),
6 miles inland from the Adriatic, (re)founded as a Latin colonia between 290 and
286 BC (Livy, Perioch. 11), was a city of the Praetuttiana regio (the southern part
of Augustus' regio V), in which Illyrian elements are not surprisingly detectable. No
reference to Phlegon in the lengthy but slightly strange article on the Praetuttiana
regio by M. Hofmann, RE!!.! (1954) 1639-73 (but information e.g. about the
manufacture of Knackebrotm the 'Groftdeutsches Reich').
18 Falco's Sicilian origin: Salomies, Adoptive. . . Nomenclature (1992) 123 f. - China:
thus Stevens, Latomus 14 (1955) 384 ffi; against, Campbell, Historia!8 (1989) 371
ff. - Greek barriers: Hodgson, Hist, of Northumberland II 3 (1840) 149 ff.; Crow, in
Studien zu den Militargrenzen Roms III (1986) 724 ff. - Jupiter: Virgil, Aen. 1.279 f;
cf. also remarks by A.R. Birley, Trans. Durham & North'd 3 (1974) 13 ff. O.
Lattimore, 'Geography and the ancient empires', in M.T. Larsen (ed.), Power and
Propaganda. A Symposium on Ancient Empires (Copenhagen 1979) 35-40, at 37 ff,
has a view similar to my own: 'both the great Wall of China and the fortified frontiers
of the Roman empire, though they have always been regarded as necessary "to keep
out the barbarians", were in fact constructed by the Chinese and the Romans to limit
their own expansion.' All the same, Hadrian was influenced by Greek notions of
'walling out the barbarians'. Whittaker, Frontiers (1994) and in Kennedy, Roman
Army (1996) 27 (citing Crow and others), does not do justice to these aspects.
19 The name Coria: Bowman and Thomas, Tabulae Vindolandenses II p. 96 f. -
Florus: HA Had. 16.3 {ambulare per Britannos). - outposts: Daniels (ed.), Bruce,
Handbook (1978) 209 ff., 295 ff.; E. Birley, Research on Hadrian's Wall(1961) 235
ff., 242 ff. - altar: Britannia 10 (1979) 346 no. 7 = AE 1979. 388.
20 coins: BMC III pp. 318, 466, 480. - commercial dealings: e.g. Bowman and
Thomas, Tabulae Vindolandenses II nos. 180, 343; R. and A. Birley, 'Four new
writing-tablets from Vindolanda, ZPE 100 (1994) 431-46, at 440 ff.; A.R. Birley,
'Supplying the Batavians at Vindolanda', Proc. 16th Int. Congress of Roman Frontier
Studies, Rolduc 1995 (forthcoming). Cf. now A.K. Bowman and J.D. Thomas, 'New
writing-tablets from Vindolanda', Brittania 27 (1996) 229-328 (with, at 326 ff.,
improved readings of one text from ZPE 100, 440 ff). - dedications: e.g. RIB 990,
1723. - Laelianus: Fronto, Ad Verum imp. 2.19, p. 128 van den Hout.
21 R. Birley, Vindolanda. The Early Wooden Forts I (1994), esp. 125 f. - petition:
Bowman and Thomas, Tabulae Vindolandenses II nos. 180, 344 (not interpreting
'Your Majesty' as the Emperor). Cf. A.R. Birley, art. cited in note 20. (Part of no.
344 is illustrated here as Plate 17.)
22 'another visitor': Camden, cited by E. Birley, Research (1961) 6. — Cerialis to
Brocchus: Bowman and Thomas, Tabulae Vindolandenses II no. 233; other, still
unpublished, writing-tablets further document Cerialis' hunting. - vertragi: Arrian,
Cyneg. 2-3; tetrafarmacum: HA Had. 21.4 (cf. p. 25 above). - Pennines: RIB 1041.
- Silvanus Cocidius: RIB 1207, 1578; cf. further E. Birley, 'The deities of Roman
Britain', in ANRW2.1%. \ (1986) 3-112, at 59 f.
23 coastal system: E. Birley, Research on Hadrians Wall (1961) 126 ff; Daniels (ed.),
Bruce, Handbook (1978) 260 ff.; Breeze and Dobson, Hadrians Wall(1987) 43 ff.;
G.D.B. Jones, Britannia 7 (1976) 236 ff., 13 (1982) 283 ff, reporting on recent
research and arguing that some kind of palisade connected the coastal installations.
Cf. the summaries by Jones and R.L. Bellhouse in Daniels, Eleventh Pilgrimage
(1989) 92 ff., 89 ff. - Agrippa at Maryport: RIB 823-6 (dedications to Jupiter Best
and Greatest, at least two of them also to the Emperor's numen).
332
24 Octavius: Bowman and Thomas, Tabulae Vindolandenses II no. 343 (especially
lines 20-1). - milestones: RIB 2244; 2265; 2272, on which cf. Zahrnt, ZPE 73
(1988) 195 ff.
25 Wroxeter: RIB 288, cf. comments by Salway, Roman Britain (1981) 185 ff on
Wroxeter and other British towns, and 189 f., 547 f., on the Fens.
26 HA Had. 11.3. The reading in eius usu, with eius referring to Sabina, is preferred in
the edition by Callu et al., ad loc. Schulz, Hadrian (1904) 62 f, seems to have been
the first to infer that Sabina and the dismissed officials were in Britain with Hadrian
and that this 'Skandal' took place there. This was also the view of Syme, Tacitus
(1958) 501, 778 ff.; id., The travels of Suetonius Tranquillus', Hermes 109 (1981)
105-17, at 112 ff. = RPlll (1984) 1344 ff.; and elsewhere. The ab epistulis was
normally in attendance, wherever the Emperor went, Millar, Emperor (1977) 90 f.,
cf. ibid. 6, 127 f. - Famous Whores-, known only from Johannes Lydus, De mag. 3.64.
- Tiberius: Suetonius, Tib. 43-5. - Epit. de Caes. 14.8.
27 HA Had. 11.4-6.
28 The existence of the castra peregrina under Trajan is guaranteed by ILTun 778, the
career of the former princeps peregrinorum Q. Geminius Sabinus: Dobson,
Primipilares (1978) 222 f, no. 103. - Dedication to Septicius: Johannes Lydus, De
mag. 2.6.
29 Above, p. 142.
30 BMC III 412, 490, 498, 508; Toynbee 53 ff. [Cf: Add., p. 359 below.]
CHAPTER 12 A NEW AUGUSTUS

1 HA Had. 12.1,3-4.
2 HA Had. 12.1; Dio 68.81; Vogt, Alex. Munzen (1924) I 99, II 45. - Haterius:
Thomasson, Laterculil (1984) 348. - Strobel, ZPE7X (1988) 268 ff., argues that there
was a serious uprising in Egypt at this time: not convincing. - Vestinus: IGRI 136 =
Sm. 264; CP105; PIR2] 623 (both assuming a date late in the reign, for which there
seems to be no evidence. The date proposed here is of course equally conjectural).
3 Rammius a possible Guard Prefect: Syme, 'Guard Prefects of Trajan and Hadrian',
JRS70 (1980) 64-80 = RP III (1984) 1276 ff, at 72 = 1290. For Narbo, cf. CIL
XII 4416, Q. Rammius Q. 1. Fronto. There are other Rammii (not a common name)
in Narbonensis.
4 HA Had. 16.3-4. The missing line has been much discussed; cf. Callu et al., Hist.
Aug. (1992) 117 note 158. W.D. Lebek kindly tells me he would prefer a different
verb to latitare in Florus' third line.
5 Florus, Vergilius orator an poeta 1 ff. On Florus cf. RE 6.2 (1909) 2761 ff; Garzetti,
Athenaeum 42 (1964) 136 ff; Bessone, ANRW2.34.1 (1993) 80 ff
6 Florus, poems 1, 2, 4, 6, 8.
7 Florus, Epit., praef. 8; 2.30.29; 2.33.51, 2.34.66. The date at which this work was
written is not clear. I incline to a Hadrianic date, although it cannot be proved. The
indication in the preface - 'not much less than two hundred years from Caesar
Augustus to our age' - is too vague to allow precision. Cf. the works cited in note
5 above.
8 wintered: HA Had. 12.3. - Nemausus: ibid. 12.2; Dio 69.10.2-3a. - epitaph: CIL
XII 1122 = Sm. 520. - horses and dogs: HA Had. 20.12.
9 Rivet, Narbonensis (1988) 256 ff.
10 CIL XII 1122 = Sm. 520. I prefer to understand the end of line 4 as et ruscos, 'and
thickets', rather than Etruscos, which is out of place with Pannonian boars.
(Henderson, Hadrian (1923) 17 note 2, has a characteristically sarcastic comment
on this.) Thus Nadel, RSA 12 (1982) 182. - Bucephalus: Plutarch, Alex. 61. - new
city in Asia: HA Had. 20.13, cf. above, p. 164.
333
NOTES TO PAGRD 145-50
11 tiles: CIL XV 691 ff.; cf. Temporini, Frauen (1978) 11 ff; R.-C. no. 631. Since
Hadrian could well still have been in Gaul at the beginning of AD 123, there is no
obstacle {pace Temporini) to the Nemausus basilica being inaugurated on Plotina's
death. - exactor: ILS 4844 = Sm. 142. - Dio 69.10.31-3a.
12 Syme, 'More Narbonensian senators', ZPE65 (1988) 1-24 = RPVl (1991) 209 ff,
especially 12 ff. = 220 ff., surveys these people. Cf. PIR2A715, 1513, D 126, 152,
167, 182-3. - Macedo: ILS 6998.
13 bulwark: Cicero, Pro Fonteio 13. - Arcanus: ILS 1064; PIR2 A 333; Martial 8.72.3.
14 Licinianus: Martial 1.49.19 ff., 40. - Sura: CIL II 4282; ILS 6956, etc. Cf. Syme,
'Rival cities, notably Tarraco and Barcino', Ktema 6 (1981) 271-85 = RPIV (1988)
74 ff., at 276 = 81 f. - arch: erected not at the wish of Sura, but of a homonymous
ancestor under Augustus, see G. Alfoldy, 'Der romische Bogen iiber der Via Augusta
bei Tarraco (Arc de Bera) und seine Inschrift', Klio 78 (1996) 158-70, summaris-
ing and slightly emending X. Dupre i Raventos, L'arc roma de Bera (Hispania
Citerior) (Rome 1994) - Pedanii: RE 19.1 (1937) 23 f. (Groag).
15 Alfoldy, RESupp. 15 (1978) 599 ff., 617 ff; Tarraco (1991) 24 ff. - summoned:
Livy 26.19.12, 51.16. - Augustus: Florus, Epit. 2.33.51. - rebuilt: HA Had. 12.3.
16 Temple: Tacitus, Ann. 1.78; Alfoldy, Tarraco (1991) 43 ff.
17 On Hadrian exploiting this anniversary, Strack 12 ff; BMClll cxv, clxvii; M. Grant,
Roman Anniversary Issues (Cambridge 1950) 101 f; Syme, Tacitus (\9 58) 248, 496.
Suetonius, D. Aug. 21.2 (contrast 31.5). - On Tacitus' insinuation, Syme, Tacitus
517 and elsewhere.
18 levy: HA Had. 12.4. - 1,000 men: ILS 2726 = Sm. 276.
19 HA Had. 12.4 has been much discussed: cf. Syme, 'Hadrian and Italica', JRS 54
(1964) 142-9 = RPll (1979) 617 ff., at 145 f. = 622 ff.; Nierhaus, in Corolla
Swoboda (1966) 151 ff; Gage, REA 71 (1969) 65 ff
20 HA Had. 12.5. - Calpurnius Flaccus: ILS 6946; Pliny, Ep. 5.2; A.R. Birley, Fasti
(1981) 237. - gild statues: ILS 6930.
21 coinage: BMC III 501. - Segisama: Florus, Epit. 2.33.48; Orosius 6.21.3. -
Quartinus: CIL XIV 4473, XIII 1802, improved by Alfoldy, Fasti (1969) 79 ff.
22 coinage: Toynbee 102 ff; BMClll 340, 346, 511-12. - Dio 69.10.1. - request: A.
Gellius, NA 16.13.4. - lavish scale: cf. e.g. Garcia y Bellido, in Les empereurs romains
(1965) 7 ff.; Caballos Rufino, Itdlica (1994) 109 ff. - ILS 5973, Villanueva de
Cordoba, registers a Julius Proculus adjudicating boundaries between three Baetican
communities, his verdict confirmatum ab imp. Caesar[e] Hadriano Aug. Alfoldy, Fasti
Hisp. (1969) 166 f, identifies Proculus as the cos. suffi 109 {ILS 1040), suggesting
that he was with Hadrian as comes in Spain and appointed iudex for the purpose.
(Date and identification rejected by A.U. Stylow in the new edition of the inscrip-
tion, CIL II2 7 (1995), 776.) More is now known, and even more can now be
conjectured, about the Proculus cos. 109: he was apparently cos. 77, presumably under
Hadrian, perhaps suffi II m 134 or 137, more likely perhaps the intended colleague,
as cos. ord, of Servian us cos. Ill ord. in 134, below note 4 to Chapter 21. The infor-
mation comes from a new fragmentary inscription at Larinum: G. De Benedettis
and A. Di Niro, L'anfiteatro di Larinum. Iscrizioni, monete, sepolture (Molise 1995)
21 ff, whose restorations need improving. Werner Eck kindly showed me a copy of
this publication. Cf. further remarks in A.R. Birley, 'Hadrian and Greek senators'
ZPE 116(1997)231 ff.
23 frontiers: 774 Had. 12.6-7.
24 Gutsfeld, Nordafrika (1989) 88 ff., especially 98 ff, argues that the motus was
invented, a confusion with the trouble of 117; this seems too extreme. - Antoninus:
774 Ant. Pius 5.4.
25 HA Had. 12.8. - Quartinus: Alfoldy, Fasti (1969) 79 ff.
334
CHAPTER 13 RETURN TO THE EAST

1 'most poorly documented': Halfmann, Itinera (1986), 197. - HA: Had. 12.8. -
coinage: Vogt, Alex. Munzen (1924) I 100, II 46.
2 road-building: CIL VIII 10114 = 22173; seventeen further milestones from AD 124,
Labrousse, Mel. soc. toul. 2 (1948) 143 note 111, who firmly argues for a visit to
Africa by Hadrian on his way to the east, although he dates it a year too early, fol-
lowing Strack 73 ff.; Halfmann, Itinera (1986) 197, rejects a visit. - Metilius:
Thomasson, Laterculil (1984) 396; PIR2 M 549.
3 On Phlegon as a source for the imperial itinerary, Weber, Hadrianus (1907) 94 ff.
- 'Furnita': EGrH257 fr. 22. Weber 120 failed to identify this as Furnos. - Furnos
Minus: Gascou, ANRW 2.10.2 (1982) 281 f. - Furnos Maius: N. Ferchiou,
'Quelques inedites de Furnos Maius', in LAfrica Romana 2 (Sassari 1985) 179-88.
4 Bradua: ILS 8824; A.R. Birley, Fasti (1981) 92 ff.
5 ravaged: Orosius 7.12; Applebaum, Jews and Greeks (1979) 269 ff. - baths: Sm 60.
- address: thus the editor on Ol. 122. - benevolence: Ol. 120-1. - coins: Toynbee
121; BMC III 524. - new city: Orosius 7.12; Syncellus 659, 19, etc., cf. Weber,
Hadrianus (1907) 119 f. - Hadrianopolis: located by G.D.B. Jones and J.H. Little,
JRS61 (1971) 67 ff.
6 Crete: a visit is assumed by Strack 77; dismissed by Halfmann, Itinera (1986) 197.
- Cyprus: on Flaccus, A.R. Birley, Fasti (1981) 237. - explorer: Tertullian, Apol.
5.7. - Quartinus: Alfoldy, Fasti (1969) 79 ff.
7 Malalas 278 f., cf. Weber, Hadrianus (1907) 231 f. - 'Baths': Comptes-rendus de
lAcademie des Inscriptions (1989) 535 no. 1. - temple: Suda, s.v. Iovianus. - coinage:
Vogt, Alex. Munzen (1924) I 100, II 46.
8 The commemorative coinage later celebrates both the exercitus Syriacus and exercitus
Cappadocicus, BMClll 503, 498. Both armies saw Hadrian several times. - Parthian
rival kings: Schippmann, Grundziige (1980) 64; Karras-Klapproth, Pros. Studien
(1988) 114 ff., 201 f. - Parthamaspates and Ialud: HA Had 5.4; Weber, Hadrianus
(1907) 119; Drijvers, ANRW2.8 (1977) 874 f. - daughter, throne: HA Had 13.8.
9 coinage: BMClll 425, 433, 434 (expeditio); 254, 437 Qanus). - Orosius 7.19.4.
10 Praesens: Eck, Chiron 13 (1983) 160 note 379. - Armenians: HA Had 21.11.
11 Neocaesarea, Nicopolis, Amasia: Weber, Hadrianus (1907) 265; D. Magie, Roman
Rule in Asia Minor (Princeton 1950) 1460. Dated by Halfmann, Itinera (1986) 198,
to 123 rather than 131 (as Weber). - Phlegon: FGrH257 fr. 18. - Strabo: R. Syme,
Anatolica. Studies in Strabo (Oxford 1995) 357.
12 Arrian, Periplus 1.1. - Xenophon, Anab. 4.7.21 ff.
13 Arrian, Periplus 1.2 ff. - harbour: ibid. 16.6.
14 Hyssus: Arrian, Periplus 3.1. - native rulers: ibid. 11.2-3, 18.3. - Cotys: ibid. 17.3;
FGrH257 fr. 17; PIR2 ] 276 (with stemma); Nadel, RSA 12 (1982) 186 ff.
15 Arrian, Periplus 12.2. - Septicius: Pliny, Ep. 1.1. - Suetonius on Pliny's staff: argued
from Pliny, Ep. 10.94.1, by Syme, Tacitus (1958) 779, and 'Biographers of the
Caesars', Museum Helveticum 37 (1980) 104-28 = RPlll (1984) 1251 ff., at 123 =
1269.
16 Sinope: Pliny, Ep. 10.90. - Amisus: 10.92. - Amastris: 10.97. - Suetonius: 10.94.
- Christians: 10.96-7. - Sinope, bishop: the father of the heretic Marcion,
Epiphanius, Panarion 42; cf. ODCC2 870 f.
17 Heraclea: Bulletin de correspondence hellenique 9 (1885) 68 f.; Weber, Hadrianus
(1907) 125. - Nicomedia coinage: Toynbee 126; BMC III 524. - earthquake:
Syncellus 659, 7; Chron. Pasch. 475, etc.; Weber, Hadrianus 127 f. - Nicaea gates:
IGRlll 37. - coins of Bithynia: Toynbee 51 f.; BMClll 490, 520-1.
18 aqueduct: Pliny, Ep. 10.37. - Nicaea theatre: 10.39. - Graeculi: 10.40.2, cf. HA
Had. 1.5. - Lake: 10.41. Cf. on this theme Mitchell, Harvard Studies in Classical
Philology 91 (1987) 333.
335
19 Bithynium: Pliny, Ep. 10.39.5-6. - Hadriane: Weber, Hadrianus (1907) 126; Le
Glay, BCHTOO (1976) 357 ff, has a convenient list of towns in Asia which received
Hadrian's name. - home-town: Dio 69.11.2. - Mantinium: Robert, A travers VAsie
Mineure (1980) 132 ff. - portraits: Kahler, Villa (1950) 177 ff., followed by Grenier
and Coarelli, MEFR 98 (1986) 252, regards at least one of the figures in the tondi
from the Arch of Constantine as depicting Antinous in autumn 130, aged about 20.
On this question, p. 284, above - team of builders etc.: Epit. de Caes. 14.5. -
Trajan's reluctance: Pliny, Ep. 10.18.3, 40.3, cf. 62.
20 Catilius: Halfmann, Senatoren (1979) 133 ff., no. 38. - Cassii: ibid. 194 no. 123;
on Cassius Agrippa, A.R. Birley, Fasti (1981) 241 f.
21 Hadrian's friend: HA Had. 15.4. - prosecution: Pliny, Ep. 7.6, 7.10.1. - ruin: ibid.
10.70-1.
22 Polemo, De Physiognomia, ed. G. Hoffmann, in R. Foerster, Scriptores Physiognomici
Graeci et Latini I (Leipzig 1893) 138 ff. Exploited by Premerstein, Attentat (1908)
46 ff., but his attempt to identify Lusius Quietus in this text and date the journey
to 118 has not convinced. Text improved by Bowersock, Sophists (1969) 120 ff.,
dating the journey to 124; and cf. now Weiss, Chiron 25 (1995) 218 ff.
23 Polemo: details in PIR2 A 862. - his ancestors and connections: Sullivan, ANRW
2.7.2 (1980) 913 ff. - kinsman pupil: Philostratus, V. soph. 1.25.4 (not named).
24 Philostratus, V. soph. 1.25.2.
25 Philostratus, V. soph. 1.25.3. - Bassus and Trajan: Syme, Tacitus (1958) 510 f;
'Hadrian as philhellene: neglected aspects', BHAC 1982/83 (1985) 341-62 = RP V
(1988) 546 ff., at 356 f. = 558 f. - long train: Philostratus, V. soph. 1.25.2.
26 coins: Toynbee 130; BMC III 496. The exercitus coins are omitted in BMC, cf.
Strack 143 and no. 815. - Oresta: Weber, Hadrianus (1907) 15 ff. - statue: CIG
2020. - legate: Eck, Chiron 13 (1983) 158, cf. 169. - Coela: F. Grelle, Vautonomia
cittadina fra Traiano e Adriano (Naples 1972) 180, 212 ff. P. Gavius Balbus,
procurator of the Thracian Chersonese, was honoured by the municipium of Coela,
IKEphVll 1, 3048: Eck, in Eck (ed.), Pros, und Sozialgeschichte (1993) 370 ff. -
road-building: CIL III S 1420735, cf. 7615. - victory over Scythians: IGR I 884;
Nadel, RSA 12 (1982) 187. - further north: thus Weber, Hadrianus 151. - Praesens:
Eck, Chiron 13 (1983) 160. - Polemo: De Phys. 139.
CHAPTER 14 A SUMMER IN ASIA

1 Florus: 1.40.15. - Propertius: 3.22.1 ff. - Tryphaena: PIR2 A 900. - Mucianus:
Syme, 'Pliny the procurator', Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 73 (1969)
210-36 = RPll (1979) 742 ff., at 203 ff. = 744 f. - earthquake: Malalas 279.
2 Falco: Eck, Chiron 13 (1983) 158. His son died in 180, aged 62: ILS 1106. - Polla:
J. and L. Robert, Bulletin epigraphique 90 (1977) 418 f., no. 489, on IGR IV
779—80. - 300 years earlier: an inference from the Scholiast on Lucian, Icarom. 24,
quoted by Schulz and Winter, Asia Minor Studien 1 (1990) 36 note 30, where this
temple is said to have taken as long to finish as that of Olympian Zeus at Athens. -
Apollonis: Polybius 22.20. - Pliny, Ep. 10.41.5.
3 gold thread: Pliny, NH36.98. - whole province: IGRW 140, cf. Schulz and Winter,
Asia Minor Studien 1 (1990) 37 ff. - neocorusr. ibid. 49 ff. - temple construction:
ibid. 56 ff.
4 Hadriane, etc.: Weber, Hadrianus (1907) 132 £; cf. Le Glay, BCH 100 (1976) 358
f. - Apollonia, Miletopolis: IGRW 128 f.; 121-3; Weber 132 and notes 418-19. -
500 cities: e.g. Philostratus, V. soph. 2.1.3. - Parium: CIL III 374; Weber 133 note
476. - Ajax: Philostratus, Her. 288. - Alexandria Troas: CIL III 7282; Weber 133.
5 HA Had. 20.13; Dio 69.10.2; Weber, Hadrianus (1907) 131; Robert, Documents
dAsie Mineure (1987) 133 ff.; on Hadriania and Hadriani, p. 262, above.
336
6 Polemo, De phys. 138 ff.
7 alleged attempt: Premerstein, Attentat (1908) 46 ff.; better interpreted by
Bowersock, Sophists (1969) 120 ff. - Nigrinus: Dio 69.2.5. - Tarraco: HA Had.
12.5.-Athens: ibid. 13.2.
8 Polemo, De phys. 160 ff. (Favorinus); 148 (Hadrian); cf. Scriptores Physiognomici 11
51 f.
9 Zeus the Hunter: Robert, Documents dAsie Mineure (1987) 133 ff. - letter: Ol. 79.
The interpretation by Weber, Hadrianus (1907) 136 ff., is doubted by D. Magie,
Roman Rule in Asia Minor (Princeton 1950) 1478, and OL, ad loc.
10 population of Pergamum: Galen 5.49 K. - On the city, W. Radt, Pergamon
(Cologne 1988), especially 239 ff. on the Trajaneum. - Quadratus and Bassus: PIR2
J 507-8.
11 Satan's throne: Revelation 2.13. - temple-wardenship: Price, Rituals (1984) 252 f. -
Asclepieum: Le Glay, BCH 100 (1970) 347 ff. - New Asclepius: IGR IV 351;
Weber, Hadrianus (1907) 135.
12 Library: RE 3.1 (1897) 414 f. - Bassus' monument: Habicht, Pergamon VIII 3
(1969) 43 ff. - Camerinus: Eck and Roxan, in Frei-Stolba and Speidel (eds),
Festschrift Lieb (1995) 77 f. - Rufinus: PIR2 C 1637.
13 Nico: PIR2 A 226. - Galen: ibid. G 24. - attendant's eye: Galen 5.17 f. K. Galen
has only two other mentions of Hadrian: that he had a work dedicated to him by
Favorinus, 1.40 f. K., and that he approved of the edition of Hippocrates by the
doctor Artemidorus Capito, 15.21 K.
14 Mytiiene: IGRW 84-7, 89; Weber, Hadrianus (1907) 135 f - Sardes: Polemo, De
Phys. 138, as amended by Bowersock, Sophists (1969) 120 ff. - Thyatira, Nacrasa:
IGRW 1196-9; 1160; Weber 138. - Saittae: Weiss, Chiron 25 (1995) 213 ff.
15 Polemaeanus: PIR2 J 260; Halfmann, Senatoren (1979) 111 f., no. 16. - Julius
Pardalas: PIR2 J 448. - Menemachus: Plutarch, Mor. 798 A ff, 805 A ff. -
ridiculous: ibid. 811 B f. - further quotations: ibid. 813 D ff; 813 E f; 825 D; 814
Cf.;8l4Ff.
16 Plutarch dead: C.P. Jones, Plutarch (1971) 34. - statue: SIG3 829A = Sm. 487. -
Bassus: Halfmann, Senatoren (1979) 119 f, no. 26. - Major: ibid. 153 ff., no. 54.
- Arrian: ibid. 146 f, no. 56. The much debated identification of the historian with
the proconsul Arrianus who composed a Greek epigram for an altar to Artemis at
Corduba, AE 1974. 370, remains conjectural, of course: but Bosworth, ANRW
2.34.1 (1993) 238 ff., seems to me to make it even more plausible (from the content
of the poem). Meanwhile, J. Beltran Fortes, 'Arriano de Nicomedia y la Betica, de
nuevo', Habis 23 (1992) 171-96, has argued that the style of carving demands a
third-century date for the stone; I am not convinced. (Werner Eck, who himself
finds Beltran's case more persuasive than I do, kindly drew my attention to this
article.) - Charax: Halfmann 161 f., no. 73.
17 Anth. Pal. 12, especially 17, here quoted. For Strato's date, Bowie, in Russell (ed.),
Antonine Literature (1990) 56 f.
18 Trocetta: AE 1957. 17. - Peducaeus: Eck, Chiron 13 (1983) 160. - Tmolus: Weber,
Hadrianus (1907) 139 and note 504.
19 Polemo, colossal sum, etc.: Philostratus, V. soph. 1.25.2; IGR IV 1398, 1431. -
second Wardenship: Price, Rituals (1984) 258.
20 Augustus and Ephesus: cf. e.g. RE Supp. 12 (1970) 263 f. - Erythrae Landing
Festival: IGRW 1542. - Ionian League: RE 18.3 (1949) 601-5. - Panionios: IKEph
1501; Weber, Hadrianus (1907) 217. - Antimachus: Dio 69.4.6; HA Had. 16.2. -
Plato: Plutarch, Lysander 18.5. - Quintilian: Inst. or. 10.1.53. - Plutarch, Timoleon
36.2. -Artemis: Antimachi ColophoniiReliquiae^ ed. B. Wyss (Berlin 1936), fr. 75.
21 A gigantic inscription, mentioning Hadrian in the nominative case, hence no doubt
as restorer of the temple, was on view at Claros in March 1990 (evidently not
337
published: referred to indirectly by J. and L. Robert, Bulletin ipigraphique 1962,
199). - Tacitus: Eck, Chiron 12 (1982) 353. - Germanicus: Tacitus, Ann. 2.54.
22 Oenoanda letter: Worrle, Stadt und Fest (1988).
23 Gavii: Eck, in Eck (ed.), Pros, und Sozialgeschichte (1993) 368 ff. - Bassus: Pliny,
Ep. 10.21, 86a.
24 Petronius Priscus: AE1993. 447 (presumably before 128 from Hadrian's titulature).
- petitions: Dio 69.6.3. Cf. Millar, Emperor (1977) 3, who cites similar stories.
25 hymn: Sm. 726 = IKEph 1145. - Paul: Acts 19.23 ff.
26 to Rhodes: HA Had. 13.1; Polemo, Dephys. 138, as amended by Bowersock, Sophists
(1969) 120 ff. - Erastus and Philocyrius: IKEph 1487-8. Sm. 72a and Ol. 82A
unfortunately knew only the Erastus letter. Cf. on these and the implications Drew-
Bear and Richard, in Mil. Le Glay (1994) 742 ff. - galley: Vogt, Alex. Munzen
(1924) I 100, II 46.
27 Colossus: Malalas 279, discussed by Weber, Hadrianus (1907) 243 f. - Tiberius:
Suetonius, Tib. 11-13. 'future Zeus', Apollonides, Anthologia Palatina 9.287, cited
by Bowersock, in Millar and Segal (eds), Caesar Augustus (1984) 169 ff. (a valuable
discussion of Tiberius on Rhodes and much else), at p. 181. - Tiberius and Hadrian,
Syme, Tacitus (1958) 488, 517, and elsewhere. - Romaea, Caesarea: Price, Rituals
(1984) 88. - Dio, Or. 31.121 f, praises the Rhodians for their Hellenism.
28 Praesens: Eck, Chiron 13 (1983) 160. - Nepos: still in Britain on 15 September
124, CIL XVI 70. - modifications: Breeze and Dobson, Hadrians Wall (1987)
7A ff., on 'dislocation' in this year. - Egypt: Thomasson, Laterculi I (1984) 348.
- City prefecture: Verus' successor, Lollius Paulinus, once colleague of Julius
Quadratus as consul for the first time {suff. 94), was evidently in office before
becoming cos. II (ord.), the Prefect's by now usual honour, at the beginning of 125,
FIR2 L 320.
29 HA Had. 13.1.
CHAPTER 15 A YEAR IN GREECE

c
1 a few other cities': e.g. Boeotian Coronea, to judge from IG VII 2879, honouring
him there before he was Emperor. - On the Mysteries: Mylonas, Eleusis (1961). -
knives: HA Had. 13.2.
2 undertook rites: HA Had. 13.1; Dio 69.11.1. - priestess: IGll/lll2 3575 = Sm. 71a.
- precedents: Weber, Hadrianus (1907) 109 ff. - Augustus: Dio 54.9.7 ff. -
Philopappus: proposed by Oliver, AJP7\ (1950) 295 ff
3 Herodes in Pannonia: above, p. 89. - quaestor: SIG3 863 note 1 = Sm. 199b. New
evidence on the career of his father (Roxan III 159: not consul until c. 132, rather
than c. 108 or earlier) makes necessary some revision on Herodes' career, e.g. as in
Ameling, Herodes (1983), II 1 ff - father Atticus: AE 1919. 8 = Sm. 198 shows that
he acquired ornamenta praetoria, honorary senatorial rank, perhaps from Trajan,
even if it is now clear that Trajan did not make him a senator, let alone consul, as
formerly assumed. Hadrian may initially have 'topped up' the ornamenta by making
them consularia; and then have adlected him into the Senate later on. For further
discussion, A.R. Birley, 'Hadrian and Greek senators' (ZPE 116 (1997) 209 ff). -
reform laws: Jerome, Chron. 198 Helm, etc.; Weber, Hadrianus (1907) 165 f;
Follet, Athenes (1976) 116 ff. - Pythodorus: Graindor, Athenes (1934) 32. -
Council: Weber 163; Graindor 83 ff; Follet 113 ff. - oil law: Sm. 443 = Ol. 92 .
- fish: Sm. 444 = Ol. 77. - bridge: Jerome, Chron. 198 Helm; Weber 167. - favours:
HA Had. 13.1.
4 Megara: Philostratus, V. soph. 1.24.3. - inscriptions: IG VII 70-2, 3491; Weber,
Hadrianus (1907) 182. - Sabina: IGVll 73, 74. -Apollo: Pausanias 1.44.9. - road:
ibid. 1.44.10. - milestone: IG VII 69. - edict: Ol. 56. - failure: Pausanias 1.36.3.
338
5 Epidaurus: SIG3 842 note 3; IGW 1406; Weber, Hadrianus (1907) 182 f. - Pulcher:
PIR2 C 1424; CP 81. - Council: discussed by U. Kahrstedt, 'Zwei Probleme im
kaiserzeitlichen Griechenland, II. Das Koinon der Achaier', Symbolae Osloenses 28
(1950) 70-5 (requiring revision in some details). - Plutarch: Mor. 86 B-D.
6 Troezen: IG IV 758; Weber, Hadrianus (1907) 183 f. - Hermione: IG IV 702. -
Hera: Pausanias 2.17.6. - Nero: Suetonius, Nero 22 f.; Dio 63.21. - boys' race:
Pausanias 6.16.4. - 30 December: IGLS IV 1265. - Council: IG VII 2711 f. -
aqueduct, theatre: Spawforth and Walker, JRS 76 (1986) 102 fi; Pierart, in
Frei-Stolba and Speidel (eds), Festschr. Lieb (1995) 7 ff.
7 revival of name: Pausanias 8.8.12. - Epaminondas: ibid. 8.11.8. On him cf. e.g.
Cicero, Tusc. 1.2; Justin 6.8. - Caphisodorus: Plutarch, Mor. 761 D. - Poseidon:
Pausanias 8.10.2.
8 Mantinium: cf. p. 158, above. - honour Antinous: Pausanias 8.9.7, etc.; Weber,
Hadrianus (1907) 186 ff. - Antinoe: Pausanias 8.8.4; 8.9.5.
9 Tegea: IGV 2, 50; Weber, Hadrianus (1907) 188. - Sparta: IG V 1, 486 and 32 A,
SEG XI 492, attest his presence. On Roman Sparta, Spawforth, in Cartledge and
Spawforth, Hellenistic and Roman Sparta (1989) 93 ff, especially 105 ff., 127 ff. As
he shows more clearly than had previously been done, the 'Greek renaissance', with
its obsessive attention to ancient Hellenic glories, greatly restored the fortunes of
Sparta, an essential and major component in the living museum which 'Old Greece'
was becoming. - host: Spawforth, ABSA 73 (1978) 249 ff; Halfmann, Senatoren
(1979) 125 ff., no. 29. However, their early (Trajanic) dating of Herculanus' career
is less convincing; cf. also PIR2 J 302. I return to this question in more detail else-
where, 'Hadrian and Greek senators' {ZPE116 (1997) 237 ff.). - first Eurycles: PIR2
J 301 (other members of family, 372, 587); G.W. Bowersock, 'Eurycles of Sparta',
JRS51 (1961) 111-18; id., in Millar and Segal (eds), Caesar Augustus (1984) 176
ff; Spawforth in Cartledge and Spawforth (above) 93 ff. - 36th from Dioscuri: IG
V 1, 971, 1172 = Sm. 210. - Arrian: AE 1974. 370; Eck, Chiron 13 (1983) 190.
Cf. further note 16 to Chapter 14, above. - Plutarch: Mor. 539 A, cf. p. 63, above.
- Falco: of his inscriptions only IIS 1035 includes the names of Herculanus, which
he presumably inherited after the latter's death.
10 Caudus, Corone: SEGX1 494-5; Spawforth and Walker, JRS7G (1986) 96 note 72.
- aqueduct: Spawforth in Cartledge and Spawforth, Hellenistic and Roman Sparta
(1989) 130, 216, citing 'pers. comm. from S. Walker'. - altars: IG V 1, 381-405.
- Artemis Orthia: e.g. Plutarch, lye. 18.1; Philostratus, V. Apoll. 6.20, 7.42;
Pausanias 3.16.10 f. - Atticus at Sparta: Spawforth, ABSA 75 (1980) 203 ff. -
Laconian practices: Ol. 122.
11 Lycosura: Weber, Hadrianus (1907) 189 note 675. - Abea: IGV 1, 1352; Weber 189.
- statues: Pausanias 5.12.6. - Zeus Apobaterios, coins: Weber 190 and note 679.
12 Pausanias 5.6.4-6.
13 Mummius: p. 24, above. - colonists: Pausanias 2.1.2. — Favorinus: in his speech
attributed to Dio of Prusa, Or. 37.26. - statue: ibid. 1 , 8 . - benefactions: Pausanias
2.3.5.
14 Dionysia: HA Had. 13.1; Dio 69.16.1; / G i l 2 3287; Weber, Hadrianus (1907) 162
ff. - Epicureans: Ol. 73-4. - philosopher friend: HA Had. 16.10. In favour of the
identification of friend, Epicurean and Avidius Heliodorus (as in PIR2 A 1405):
Birley, Laverna 5 (1994) 197 note 80; the letter of 125 has been re-edited by Follet,
REG 107 (1994) 158 ff; the addressee is now read as 'our Heliodorus', removing
one difficulty over the identification with Avidius (which Follet herself, however, still
rejects).
15 Bowersock, Sophists (1969) 118 f, discussing Secundus' Arabic text, para. 9. Cf.
Perry, Secundus (1964) 127. - tribune: ibid. 72-3.
16 Eusebius, HE 43. Cf. ODCC2 84 f; 1149.
339
17 temple: Vitruvius 7, pr. 15; Strabo 9.1.16, 396; Suetonius, D. Aug. 60. - went sour:
Kienast, in Festschr. Lippold (1993) 203 f. — enclosure: thus Willers, Panhell.
Programm (1990), especially 99 f., whose interpretation I largely follow.
18 aqueduct: 7LS337 = Sm. 396; Spawforth and Walker, JRS 75 (1985) 98 f. -Library:
thus Wilier, Panhell. Programm (1990) 14 ff. But cf. p. 219, above and note 11. -
Roman Agora: Kienast, in Festschr. Lippold (1993) 192, 201.
19 Eros: Pausanias 9.27.1. - verses: IG VII 1828. - Socrates: Xenophon, Symp. 8.3-15.
Lambert, Beloved (1984) 61, doubts whether Hadrian's poem implies that his rela-
tionship with Antinous had already begun. Who can tell?
20 Plutarch: Mor. 748 E-771 E. The quotations are from 748 F; 749 C ff.; 750 A ff.;
751 A; 752 C ff. - Roman attitudes: MacMullen, Historia 31 (1982) 484 ff.
21 Epit. de Caes. 14.5. - Vitalis: ILS 7741.
22 Lebadea: cf. Plutarch, Mor. 411 F. Pausanias 9.39 describes the consultation. On
Trophonius' significance for Hadrian, p. 255, above. Guarducci, Bull. Mus. Imp. 12
(1941) 156, and in Les empereurs (1965) 217, believes in a visit; Weber, Hadrianus
(1907) 177, has a different (unconvincing) explanation. Hadrian was honoured by
Lebadea as benefactor and saviour: IG VII 1675.
23 Ol. 108, 109. Later letters, ibid. 110-18.
24 Pausanias 10.35.4, 6.
25 letter: Ol. 75, with useful discussion. Augustus' measures are mentioned by
Pausanias 10.8.3-5.
26 Plutarch dead, honoured: C.P. Jones, Plutarch (1971) 34. - statue: SIG3 829A = Sm.
487. - settled conditions: Plutarch, Mor. 408 B. Cf. on Plutarch and Delphi Swain,
Historia 40 (1991) 318 ff. - Homer question: Anth. Pal. XIV 102.
27 Jrumentarius, office: ILS 9473 = Sm. 334a. - letter from Tibur: Ol. 74bis. - hon-
oured by Hellenes: SIG3 835A. Instructive remarks on this 'league' by C.P. Jones,
Chiron 26 (1996) 45 f. - religious days: A. Plassart, Fouilles de Delphes III 4 (Paris
1970), 307, col. III.
28 Tempe: HA Had. 26.5. - Macedonia: from the coins (BMC III 494, 524). -
Nicopolis: SFGXl 493; Halfmann, Itinera (1986) 203. - Herodes: SIG3 863 note
1 = Sm. 199a. Further, A.R. Birley, ZPE \\G (1997), 209 ff.
CHAPTER 16 PATER PATRIAE

1 Dyrrachium: Ol. 56. - Megara road: Pausanias 1.44.10; IG IV 69. - northern
Greece: Halfmann, Itinera (1986) 203.
2 Etna: HA Had. 13.3. - coins: Toynbee 128 ff.; BMC III 496, 516 f. - Falco:
Salomies, Adoptive Nomenclature (1992) 121 ff. - Latro: CP 104.
3 preferred Cato: HA Had. 16.6. - consul Verres: CIL VI 2081 + 32378 = Sm. 10;
AE1962. 391 = RoxanI26.
4 Hadrian's construction of an artificial harbour for Lupiae in the heel of Italy, men-
tioned in passing by Pausanias 6.19.9 (who somehow got the idea that that town,
modern Lecce, had replaced Sybaris, which is a long way away, in the instep) may
go back to this journey. The family of the future M. Aurelius (so much favoured by
Hadrian) claimed descent from the legendary founder of the place, HA M. Aur. 1.6
(from Marius Maximus): this may have helped to set Hadrian's benefaction in train.
- Via Traiana, Falco: above, p. 58. - Venusia: ILS 6485. - Aeclanum: CIL IX 1111.
- Eggius: PIR2 E 5; cf. Boatwright, Chiron 19 (1989) 238 ff. - improve Via Appia:
CIL IX 6072, 6074 fi; AE 1930. 122. - Beneventum: the Arch has often
been studied, cf. e.g. F.J. Hassell, Der Trajansbogen in Benevent (Mainz 1966), who,
however, argues that the whole work was complete in 114 and not altered; against,
e.g. F.A. Lepper, JRS 59 (1969), reviewing Hassell, especially 259 ff. - Neratii: PIR2
N 56 ff. - Tervetia: Phlegon, FGrH257 fr. 21. - Terventum: CIL IX 2565.
340
5 Coins: Strack 83 (not in BMC III). - Pantheon: Boatwright, City (1987) 43 ff. -
Deified Trajan: HA Had. 19.9; 7Z5306 = Sm. 141a.; Boatwright, City 7 A ff. -Janus:
BMC III 254, 437.
6 Delphi letter: Ol. 74bis. - Tibur: Syme, 'Spaniards at Tivoli', Ancient Society 13/14
(1982/3) 341-63 = RP V (1988) 94 ff. - Vopiscus: Statius, Silv. 1.3, cf. 1 praef. -
Minicii: Syme, RP V 99 f; ILS 1061 = Sm. 225; 1029 = Sm. 224. - Papus: HA
Had. 4.2; Syme, RPV 100 f.
7 The literature on the villa is very copious. Cf. e.g. Kahler, Villa (1950); Boatwright,
City (1987) 138 ff. - names: HA Had. 26.5.
8 Juvenal's farm: 11.65. - arts . . . Caesar: 7.1 ff. - writers of history: 7.98 ff. - Florus:
HA Had. 16.3-4. - Voconius: Apuleius, Apol. 1 1 . - Voconius Victor: Martial 7.29;
11.78.
9 famous exchange: HA Had. 15.12 f. - Philostratus: V soph. 1.8. 1 ff.
10 Dio 69.3.4, 6. - On Exile: A. Barigazzi (ed.), Favorino di Arelate: Opere (Florence
1966) 347 ff. Swain, ZPE 79 (1989) 150 ff, doubts whether Favorinus was really
exiled, perhaps rightly.
11 HA Had. 15.10-13. 'Thirty Legions': perhaps marginally relevant as an argument
for the continued existence of IX Hispana at this time. If it had already been
destroyed, the total would have gone down to twenty-nine. But the exchange
between Emperor and intellectual is of course not dated.
12 HA Had. 16.8-10.
13 late Roman work: Charisius, Gramm. Lat. 1, 209. - Scaurus: A. Gellius, NA
11.15.3; HA Ver. 2.5. - obiter. Charisius 219. -praeterpropter. Gellius, NA 19.10.5
ff. - obsolete words: ibid. 1.10. - colour: ibid. 2.20.
14 glass ball game: ILS 5173; Champlin, ZPE 60 (1985) 159 ff. - Lollius: PIR2 L 320.
- young Marcus: HA M. Aur. 4.1, 1.2, 1.10.
15 FO2 49, discussed by Vidman 115 f. - office: cf. HA Had. 19.1. - Ostia restored:
Boatwright, Chiron 19 (1989) 254 f. - other towns: ibid. 242 f., 257 f., 261. -
Gabii: Juvenal 3.192, 7.4, 10.100. - Veii: Boatwright 243 f. - Etruria: HA Had.
19.1. - Formiae: CIL X 6079. - Tarracina: ILS 1066.
16 G. Alfoldy, 'Hadrian als Magister der fratres Arvales', ZPE 100 (1994) 464-8.
17 Achaians: Ol. 78 A-B. - Stratonicea: Ol. 79-81. - Eudaemon: ILS 1449 = Sm. 283;
CP 110.
18 palace, Horti: Boatwright, City (1987) 150 ff.
19 FO2 49, as restored by Syme, 'Transpadana Italia', Athenaeum 63 (1985) 28-36 =
RP V (1988) 431 ff., at 28 = 432. - Trebula: AE 1972. 153. - Laberia: PIR2 L 15.
- Aequicoli: CIL IX 4116. - Lacus Fucinus: 715302 = Sm. 388; HA Had. 22.12. -
Hadria: HA Had. 1.1; 19.1; and cf. note 17 to Chapter 11, above. - Cupra: ILS
313.
20 Cingulum: CIL IX 5681. - Maenius: ILS2735 = Sm. 265; CP 120. - Firmum: CIL
IX 5353. Ancona: LLS 1068; ibid. 298 records a new mole for the harbour.
21 Faventia: HAAel. 2.8, Ver. 1.9. - Quietus' letter: CIL III 355 = Sm. 454b. - favour.
above, pp. 289 ff. - Vicetia: R.-C. no. 681. - Comum: ILS 6725. - Caesernii: AE
1957. 135 = Sm. 195; ILS 1068. - kinsman: CP 109. - Marcellus: AE 1934. 231.
- Concordia: cf. CLL V 1822, Pedania L. f. Secunda, and 8699, Ser. Julius Pardalas.
22 FO2 49; HA Had. 19.8. - salus Aug.: Strack 93 £; BMC III 476 f, 486. Epit. de
Caes.: 14.9. - fractured: HA Had. 26.3.
23 HA Ant. Pius 2.1-3.1; Had. 22.13; M. Aur. 11.6; discussed by Eck, HA Coll. n.s. 1
(1991) 183 ff.
24 Appian, BC 1.38; Tacitus, Ann. 13.4.2. - Coins: Toynbee 166 ff; BMC III 347,
352, 361.
25 Proculus: ILS 1080 = Sm. 212; A.R. Birley, ZPE 116 (1997) 234 f. - Albucius:
Suetonius, De rhet. 6. -Augustus: Suetonius, D. Aug. 58.1-2.
341
26 Augustus: Res Gestae 35\ Dio 55.10.10, etc. - Tiberius: Suetonius, Tib. 26.2, 67.2.
- Hadrian's speech: Charisius, Gramm. Lat. 1. 222. - Antium: Philostratus, V. Apoll.
8.20. - Tacitus: Pliny, Ep. 2.1.6. - pater patriae. Jerome, Chron. 199 Helm (AD
128); Eck, in Festschr. Straub (1982) 217 ff.
27 HA M. Aur. 4.2-3; Dio 69.21.2; 71.35.2; HA M. Aur. 1.4; A.R. Birley, Marcus
Aurelius (1987) 232 ff.
28 Salan: above, p. 183. - Dio 69.17.1; Hephaestio of Thebes, ed. D. Pingree (Leipzig
1973) 2.18.62 ff. - parents' marriage: Pliny, Ep. 6.26.
29 Nepos: HA Had. 23.4. - modifications: Breeze and Dobson, Hadrians Wall(1987)
74 f. - Severus: ILS 1056 and add. = Sm. 217; RIB 739, 1550; Dio 69.13.2. Two
newly discovered diplomas, issued on 16th and on 20th August AD 127, both to be
published in ZPE, supply the names of hitherto unknown governors of Lower
Germany and Britain, respectively L. Coelius Rufus and L. Trebius Germanus. The
former {cos. 119) had been governor of Upper Moesia in 120, the latter had been
consul c. 124 (A.R. Birley, Fasti (1981) 237) and was presumably related to C.
Trebius Maximus {cos. 122) and C. Trebius Sergianus {cos. ord. 132). I am grateful
to Werner Eck for information about the new documents, which I hope to discuss
further at a later date.
CHAPTER 17 AFRICA
1 Augustus: Suetonius, D. Aug. 47. - elite: cf. Champlin, Fronto (1980) 5 ff. -
Pactumeius: Inscr. lat. de TAlgerie II 644 = MW 298. - Suetonius: AE 1953.73 =
Sm. 281; CP76. - Fronto: Pan. lat. Vet. 8 (5). 14.2.
2 Caesernius: AE 1957. 135 = Sm. 195. - his father: CIL XVI 56; CP 67. - Horse
Guards: above, p. 212. - Arrian: Cyneg. 24.1-5, cf. Bosworth, ANRW2.34A (1993)
230, 261.
3 governors: Thomasson, laterculi I (1984) 396 f. - Major: Halfmann, Senatoren
(1979) 143 ff., no. 54. - Catullinus: perhaps Spanish, Syme, 'The career of Valerius
Propinquus', RPV (1988) 579-607, at 603. - Latro: CP 104. - Gavius: Thomasson
419 f.; CP 105bis; Supp. p. 33 (defective); Eck, in Eck (ed.), Pros, und
Sozialgeschichte (1993) 368 ff.
4 HA Had. 13.4; 20.4, 22.14. - aqueduct: A. Audollent, Carthage romaine (Paris
1901) 56 f, 183 ff.
5 Utica: Gascou, ANRW 2.10.2 (1982) 183. - Fabius Hadrianus: Cicero, II Verr.
1.70; Livy, Per. 86.
6 A. Gellius, NA 16.13. - Lepcis: A.R. Birley, The African Emperor Septimius Severus
(London 1988) 16 ff. - quinquennalis: HA Had. 19.1.
7 Gaius, Inst. 1.96; ILS 6780 (Gigthis); Gascou, ANRW 2.10.2 (1982) 192 f;
Sherwin-White, Citizenship (1973) 255 f; M. Zahrnt, 'Latium maius und
Munizipalstatus in Gigthis und Thisiduo in der Africa proconsularis', ZPE 79
(1989) 177-80.
8 Gascou, ANRW2A0.2 (1982) 182 (Bulla), 188 (Lares), 190 (Thaenae). - Marius:
Sallust, Jug. 90.2. - Caesar: Bell. Afr. 77A. - Gascou 186 f. (Uthina, Col.
Canopitana), 191 (territory of Carthage).
9 native communities: Gascou, ANRW 2.10.2 (1982) 183 ff. He does not include
Mactar, which he argues, 197 f., only later (under Commodus) went straight from
native community to colonia, because it is still called a civitas in the 160s, CIL VIII
11799 + ILAfr. 200 + AE 1960. 114. This does not necessarily mean it was not a
municipium, especially as a dedication made there in 145 was by [mujnicipfes], CIL
VIII 11811 (which otherwise has to be explained away). As a colonia Mactar had the
title Aelia Aurelia, ILS 458, AE 1949. 47, etc. - Lollius Urbicus: A.R. Birley, Fasti
(1981) 112 ff. - Antistius Adventus: for his career, A.R. Birley, Fasti (1981) 129 ff.
342
The name 'Adventus': I. Kajanto, The Latin Cognomina (Helsinki 1965) 349. To
press this extreme conjecture further, the praenomen Quintus indicated birth in July
(Quinctilis): H. Peterson, 'The numeral praenomina of the Romans', Transactions of
the American Philological Association 93 (1952) 347-54; perhaps, then, a pointer to
Hadrian's presence at Thibilis in July 128. - Salvius Julianus: HA Did. Jul. 1.2, cf.
ILS 8973; Schumacher, Priesterkollegien (1973) 313.
10 laws: conveniently accessible as Sm. 463-4; see now D. Kehoe, The Economics of
Agriculture of Roman Imperial Estates in North Africa (Gottingen 1988).
11 altars: CIL VIII 2609 f; Le Bohec, Troisieme legion (1989) 373. - limes', ibid. 369
ff. The system was first detected by J. Baradez, Fossatum Africae (Paris 1949), whose
interpretation of it (naturally outdated in various respects) it is now fashionable to
criticise.
12 Gemellae: AE 1950. 58; Le Bohec, Troisieme legion (1989) 370 f. - for a concise
account of the frontier works, Daniels, in Wacher (ed.), Roman World (\987) 242
ff- Ad Majores: CIL VIII 2478-9 = 17969, 17971.
13 Cf. E. Birley, in Carnuntina (1956) 25 ff. = id., Roman Army Papers (1988) 15 ff.
14 column: Cassend and Janon, Bull. arch. alg. 7.1 (1977-9) 239 ff. - address: Sm.
328.
15 HA Had. 10.2; Fronto, Princ. hist. 11, p. 209 van den Hout, on which see Davies,
Latomus 27 (1968) 75 ff., reading salicibus for salibus, and with an excellent discus-
sion of Hadrian's training programme.
16 Sm. 328.
17 Le Glay, in Mil Seston (1974) 277 ff, developed by Speidel, Guards (1978) 29 f;
cf. id., Riding for Caesar (1994) 49. - Arrian on cavalry, Tact. 32-44; Wheeler,
Flavins Arrianus (1977) 361 f, is sceptical; Bosworth, ANRW234.1 (1993) 259 ff,
believes Arrian may have been at Lambaesis with Hadrian in 128, plausibly enough.
18 Sm. 328. - Catullinus: PIR2 F 25.
19 Gascou, ANRW2AQ.2 (1982) 180 f. - Quiza: CIL VIII 9697 = 21514.
20 Africa: Toynbee 33 ff; BMC III 506 f; 487 f, 518 f. - Mauretania: Toynbee 123
ff.;5AfCiII512ff;494f., 501.
21 AE 1940. 99 = Sm. 200; cf Res Gestae 12; Dio 54.10.2.
CHAPTER 18 HADRIANUS OLYMPIUS

2
1 September 128: inferred from IG II/III 2040, combined with the literary sources,
Graindor, Athenes (1934) 38; Follet, Athenes (1976) 108, 110 ff; Halfmann, Itinera
(1986) 203. - secret rituals: Clement of Alexandria, Protrepticus 21.2. - cistophori:
Kienast, JNG 10 (1959-60) 61 ff. = id., Kl. Schriften (1994) 489 ff with addenda,
500 ff, defending his view against Metcalf, Cistophori (1980) 89 f, who prefers
ren(ovavit).
2 Fuscus: cf. p. 201 above. - Antinous: cf. Lambert, Beloved (1984) 100 ff; Barnes,
JRA2 (1989) 259.
3 Statianus: ILS 1068. - Natalis: SIG3 840, Olympia: of course, Natalis did not him-
self drive, but merely paid for, the chariot that won in 129. - L. Macedo: IGR IV
869, Colossae, cf. below and note 24. - Viator: Speidel, Guards (1978) 29 f. -
Eudaemon: CP 110. - Heliodorus: cf. p. 182 and note 14, above.
4 sarcastic: Dio 69.3.5; Philostratus, V. soph. 1.22; cf. IKEph 426, 3047.
5 Dacia: suggested by Piso, Fasti (1993) 48 f. - Severus: ibid. 42 ff; Dio 69.12.2. -
Herodes: p. 000, above. - Philopappus: PIR2 J 151; Baslez, DHA 18 (1992) 89 ff
Pausanias 1.25.8 refers to his Mausoleum, without mentioning his name. - Balbilla:
PIR2} 650; cf. above, pp. 250 ff.
6 second stay: IGV 1, 486; SEGX1 492. -patronomor. AD 127/8, A.S. Bradford, T h e
343
date Hadrian was eponymous patronomos of Sparta', HorosA (1986) 71—4 (could he
still have been in office at the time of his visit?) - grain commissioner: SEG XI 4 9 1 ,
on which Halfmann, Itinera (1986) 139; Spawforth, in Cartledge and Spawforth,
Hellenistic and Roman Sparta (1989) 152 f.
7 Atticus: he was not consul until c. 132, as is now known from Roxan III 159,
rendering previous discussions obsolete. As he had previously received honorary
praetorian rank (Sm. 198) and his son was already a senator, he must be assumed to
have been adlected interpraetorios at latest c. 130. - Herculanus: the early dating of
his career by Spawforth, ABSA 73 (1978) 249 ff., also adopted by Halfmann,
Senatoren (1979) 125 ff., no. 29, is surely to be rejected; cf. e.g. PIR2 ] 302 for the
(previously favoured) view that he only became a senator under Hadrian (but the
date of birth is still implausibly early). That an inscription of his from late in Trajan's
reign gives no senatorial office (IGV 1, 380 = Sm. 137) may not be decisive, it is
true. But if he only became eponymous magistrate (patronomos) at Sparta not long
before 125 (so Halfmann, citing IGV 1, 32, 34, 44, 103, 1315; the dating of
patronomi is still not entirely certain), he would by then have been around 50 if he
had been born in the 70s. Surely too old (even if nothing is known of minimum age
for this office). His senatorial career is given by IG V 1, 1172 = Sm. 210. For further
discussion, A.R. Birley, 'Hadrian and Greek senators' ZPE 116 (1997) 209 ff
8 descendant of Miltiades and Cimon: Philostratus, V. soph. 2.1.1. - victory com-
memorated: e.g. Syll3 835A, 854. - Pericles: Plutarch, Per. 17.
9 Amphictyons: above, pp. 186 f. - embassy . . . Nicopolis: SEG XI 493.
10 Willers, Panhell. Programm (1990) 26 ff., identifies the temenos of the Olympieion
as the meeting-place of the Panhellenion, plausibly, in my view. But the matter is
still controversial (another view e.g. in Spawforth and Walker, JRS75 (1985) 78 ff).
C.P. Jones, Chiron 26 (1996) 29 ff, offers a new interpretation of Dio 69.16.1-2,
'the one certain [literary] reference to the Panhellenion', which he takes to be a
building (not compelling, although he can cite parallels), and concludes from Dio's
phrasing that the initiative came from the 'overseas' Greeks and not from Hadrian,
who merely 'permitted' them (as Dio says) to go ahead, comparing the institution
of the imperial cult in Asia and Bithynia in 30/29 BC, Dio 51-20.7. I am not
convinced: even if this single sentence - in Xiphilinus' epitome, as he concedes;
Dio's original account is lost - means what Jones believes, it is perfectly feasible that
Hadrian should have 'permitted' the Greeks to carry out what he had himself
inspired. Further, if one accepts Willers' identification of the Olympieion as the
meeting-place for the Panhellenion, Polemo's statement in his speech at the opening
ceremony (below, Chapter 20), that Hadrian's initiative (horme) to complete the
building had been divinely inspired, Philostratus, V. soph. 125.3 (mistranslated in
the Loeb edn), is enough to guarantee Hadrian's role as the creator of the new insti-
tution. This fundamental question aside, Jones's new study offers valuable insights
on many related matters.
11 Pausanias 1.18.9. - new deme: Zahrnt, Chiron 9 (1979) 393 ff., thus emends and
explains the fragment of Phlegon, FGrH 257, fr. 19. - on the various building
projects I largely follow the interpretation of Willers, Panhell. Programm (1990).
H e discusses the 'Library', 14 ff, and, while accepting resemblances to the Forum
Pacis at Rome, insists on 'der ausgepragte Charakter als Hochschule'. See now also
A. Karivieri, 'The so-called Library of Hadrian and the Tetraconch church in
Athens', in P. Castren (ed.), Post-Herulian Athens — Aspects of Life and Culture
in Athens AD 276-529 (Helsinki 1994) 8 9 - 1 1 3 , who plays down the idea of a
'university' building; further Castren, ibid. 2 - 4 , stressing the resemblance
to a Forum. (I am grateful to Professor Castren for putting this valuable volume
at my disposal.)
12 ILS 1067 = Sm. 228.
344
13 Pericles: Plutarch, Per. 8.2, 39.2. - Hadrian Olympios: Weber, Hadrianus (1907)
209 ff.
14 Perseus: e.g. Tarsus and Iconium, RE AA.2 (1932) 2415; further, Strubbe, Ancient
Society 15/17 (1984/6) 253 ff., especially 280 ff. - Spawforth and Walker, JRS75
(1985) 78 ff., 76 (1986) 88 ff., offer the fullest recent discussion of the attested
membership. It remains, of course, an argument ex silentio that great cities such as
Ephesus, Smyrna, etc., did not join. I prefer to assume that they, and a great many
other Greek cities as yet not attested, did become members.
15 HA Had. 13.8. - Parthian kings: cf. Karras-Klapproth, Pros. Stud. (1988) 114 ff;
201 f.
16 SC Juventianum: Digest 5.3..20.6. - three jurists: HA Had. 18.1. - Juventius: PIR2)
882. - Neratius Priscus: N 60. - Marcellus: N 55. - Salvius: ILS 8973 = Sm. 236.
Perhaps in Hadrian's suite: above, p. 257. - travelling consilium: cf. Crook,
Consilium (1955) 56 ff, 135 ff., who does not, however, dwell on the practicalities
involved, given Hadrian's travels.
17 Celsus proconsul: Eck, Chiron 13 (1983) 167. His predecessor, Lollianus Avitus, and
his wife Terentia, may now have joined the imperial party, cf. above, p. 246. -
Severus of Ancyra: IGRlll 174 = Sm. 216, cf. 173 = 215.
18 Erastus and Philocyrius: IKEph 1487-8.
19 Ephesians honoured Hadrian: SIG3 839 = IKEph 274. - letter: Worrle, Chiron 1
(1971) 325 ff, discussing IKEph 3016 = Ol. 187 in the light of IKEph 274. -
Titianus: IKEph 677A.
20 Oxyrhyncus: Van Groningen, in Studi Calderini-Paribenill (1956) 253 ff. - Tralles:
CIG2927; Worrle, Chiron 1 (1971) 335 f.
21 Metcalf, Mnemos. 27 (1974) 59 ff; id., Cistophori (1980) 16 f
22 Miletus: A. Rehm (ed.), Didyma II. Die Inschriften (Berlin 1958), nos. 254, 356
- Dionysius, cf. above, pp. 216 f.
23 Laodicea: IGR IV 1033 = Sm. 73 = Ol. 68. The date is incomplete, but must be
June rather than July in the light of the evidence for Apamea (note 25, below), cf.
Halfmann, Itinera (1986) 204. - On the chamberlain Alcibiades and his family,
Robert, Etudes (1938) 45 ff - Major: Halfmann, Senatoren (1979) 153 ff, no. 54.
- Patara, Modestus: IGR III 668, cf. Bowersock, BHAC 1982/3 (1985) 82 ff;
Worrle, Stadt und Fest (1988) 40 ff. - Paion of Side: Robert, Stele Kontoleon (1980)
1 ff; and cf. above, p. 251.
24 Laodicea: see previous note. - Macedo: IGR IV 869, as interpreted by Pflaum, CP
109. - Epictetus from Hierapolis: Suda, s.v. - Plutonium: Strabo 13.4.14, 629 f.
25 Apamea: according to an inscription, which he was due to publish, cited by C.P.
Jones (in a review), Phoenix 37 (1983) 74; unfortunately, permission for his
publication was then withheld, cf. Bowersock et al., AJP 108 (1987) 699 ff, for
an account of the regrettable circumstances. The text still remains inaccessible to
students, a curious state of affairs. - hunting-park: Xenophon, Anab. 1.2.7 ff. -
tomb of Alcibiades: Athenaeus 13.574 f. - Melissa: located by Robert, A travers lAsie
Mineure (1980) 257 ff. By mishap, Halfmann, Itinera (1986) 206, puts Melissa in
south Phrygia, near the wrong Metropolis, cf. Barnes, JRA 2 (1989) 249. - 'because
of the name': Robert 259 note 11 approves this suggestion by J. Hatzfeld, Alcibiade
(Paris 1949) 345 note 6. - marble quarries: Robert 221 ff. - 100 columns: Pausanias
1.18.9. -Julius Severus: AE1938. 144, Dorylaeum. - coins: Toynbee 127 ff.; BMC
III 496, 525.
26 Hadrianopolis: RE7.2 (1912) 2174, no. 5. - imperial estates: Mitchell, ANRW2J.2
(1980) 1076 ff. - Archelais: AE 1976. 675. - Rosianus: cf. Pliny, Ep. 10.26.1 -
Clemens: ILS 1067 = Sm. 228.
27 HA Had. 13.7. - castra: interpreted by Hirschfeld, Kais. Verw. (1905) 314 note 1,
as meaning the imperial household. Likewise Teja, ANRW2.7.2 (1980) 1116 f. (not
345
referring to Hirschfeld). Cf. id. 1093 f., on Cappadocian bakers. - Comana: Strabo
12.2.3, 535. - Horace: Ep. 1.6.39. - horses: Oppian, Cyneg. 1.171.
28 coins: BMC III 498 (exercitus); 508 f.; Toynbee 66 ff. - Area: ILS 1403 (time of
M. Aurelius), cf. Teja, ANRW2J.2 (1980) 1107.
29 HA Had. 13.8-9. - petty rulers: Arrian, Periplus 11.2-3, 18.3. - Bactrians: HA Had.
21.14. - Kanishka: cf. E. Yarshater (ed.), Cambridge History of Iran 3.1 (Cambridge
1983) 198 ff.
30 HA Had. 21.13; 13.9; 17.10-12; Dio 69.15.2; HA Ant. Pius 9.6. For different
views, Syme, 'Hadrian and the vassal princes', Athenaeum 59 (1981) 273-83 = RP
III (1984) 1436 ff., at 276 ff. = 1439 ff.; D. Braund, 'Hadrian and Pharasmanes',
Klio73 (1991) 208-19.
31 HA Had. 17.10; Epit. de Caes. 14.10; Tacitus, Ann. 2.26.3.
32 HA Had. 13.10. - On the governors: Eck, Chiron 13 (1983) 169 ff. - legionary
legates: above, pp. 218, 221.
33 coins: G. Macdonald, 'The pseudo-autonomous coinage of Antioch', Numismatic
Chronicle, 4th ser., 4 (1904) 105-35, at 126-9. - HA claims: HA Had. 14.1. -
Severus: Dio 55.23.2. - metropolis-, explained by Bowersock, BHAC 1982/3 (1985)
75 ff. - there are no coins of Syria in the province series; but for coins which seem
to show the Tyche of Antioch, BMC III 440. - benefactions: Malalas 277 f.
34 Antioch's 'rivals', Tyre already 'metropolis: Bowersock, BHAC 1982/3 (1985) 76, 77
f., 81. - Philo: Suda, s.v. For the fragments, FGrH no. 290, cf. A.I. Baumgarten,
The Phoenician History of Philo ofByblos (Leyden 1981) 31 note 2.
35 Herennius: Pliny, Ep. 4.28.1; Suda, s.v. Hermippos; PIR2 H 130.
36 Paulus of Tyre as advocate: CPJ157, 158a. - hostility to Jews: argued by L. Troiani,
L'opera storiografica di Filone da By bios (Pisa 1974) 23 f., 34 ff.
37 Balbilla: PIR2 J 650. - Balbillus: C 812-13; CP 15. Both distinguish delegate and
Prefect, but cf. R. Merkelbach, 'Ephesische Parerga 21. Ein Zeugnis fiir Ti. Claudius
Balbillus aus Smyrna', ZPE 31 (1978) 186-7. - betrothal to Drusilla: Josephus, A]
19.355, 20.139. - Balbilla's family: PIR2 J 149-51; and on the dynasty of
Commagene, R.D. Sullivan, ANRW2.8 (1978) 732 ff.
38 Cf. remarks on Antiochus IV and Hadrian by Willers, Panhell. Programm (1990)
101 f. - Antiochus' behaviour: Polybius 26.10; 28.18; 31.4. - Hadrian and the
plebs: HA Had. 17.8. - Epicureanism: E.R. Bevan, The House ofSeleucus (London
1902) 276 f., 304; O. Morkholm, Antiochus IV of Syria (Copenhagen 1966) 113.
39 On the policy of the king one may still benefit from consulting the classic work of
E. Bickermann, Der GottderMakkab'der (Berlin 1937). K. Bringmann, Hellenistische
Reform und Religionsverfolgung in Jud'da (Gottingen 1983), has refined the chron-
ology. (It may or may not be coincidence that the rebellion led by Bar-Kokhba was
to break out more or less exactly three hundred years after that of the Maccabees.)
Whatever the king really intended, the essential point in this context is: what
did Hadrian think Antiochus was up to? - desecration: e.g. I Mace. 1.54: 'And on
the fifteenth day of Chislev in the hundred and forty-fifth year, they builded an
abomination of desolation upon the altar.' - Josephus, A] 12.241.
40 Tacitus: Historia 5.8.2. - epispasmos: Schafer, Bar-Kokhba (1981) 45 ff; id., Trib. to
Vermes (1990) 293 ff. - rebuild Jerusalem: cf. above, pp. 232 f. - forbade circumcision:
HA Had. 14.2.
41 Paul and 'mutilation': Ep. ad Phil. 3.2; castration: Ep. ad Gal. 5.12. - extension of
lex Cornelia: Digest 48.8.4.2, cf. Dio 67.2.3, Suetonius, Dom. 7.1. - Sepphoris:
Millar, Near East (1993) 369 f.
42 Tacitus, Historia 5.8.2. - no danger: the new Parthian king, Vologaeses III, already
had a rival, Mithridates IV, Karras-Klapproth, Pros. Studien (1988) 85. He began
striking coins c. 130 — and, as it turns out, it was this Mithridates' son who was even-
tually to topple Vologaeses III and reign as Vologaeses IV, cf. Potter, ZPE 88 (1991)
346
277 ff., for a convenient text with illuminating discussion of the new inscription
from Mesene. Potter, however, assumes, 281 f., that Vologaeses III had succeeded
Chosroes soon after Hadrian's accession. I prefer to suppose that the two remained
rivals until the disappearance of Chosroes c. 127/8; thus Karras-Klapproth 114 ff.,
201 f. - abandoned ancestral religion: cf. Josephus, 4/18.141 (offspring of Herod's
son Alexander). - Berenicianus, Julian us: Halfmann, Senatoren (1979) 140 f., no.
47; 143, no. 53; note also C. Julius Agrippa, 140 f., no. 46. - H. perceived
favourably by Jews at first: Or. Sib. 5.46 ff., cf. Schafer, Trib. to Vermes (1990) 291
f., and id., Bar-Kokhba (1981) 237 ff., on positive treatment of Hadrian in some
passages of the rabbinic literature.
43 Mt Casius: HA Had 14.3. - dream: Dio 69.2.1.
44 Ulpian: Digest 50.15.1.1 - Berytus and Heliopolis: Millar, Near East (1993) 279 ff.
- local dignitary: IGLSVl 2791.
45 Palmyra: the Greek text conveniently available as IGRlll 1054 = Sm. 77. Palmyrene
text in Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum II 3959. - status of Palmyra: generally
taken to be part of the empire from the first century AD, thus Millar, Near East
(1993) 34 f. For another view, J.C. Mann, in Roxan I, 217 ff. - tokens portraying
Sabina: Salzmann, in Festschr. Himmelmann (1989) 361 ff. - Mesene, temple:
Potter, ZPE 88 (1991) 283.
46 Cf. Bowersock, Arabia (1983); Millar, Near East (1993), especially 414 ff. - 'new
province': Lewis, Greek Papyri (1989) nos. 16-22. - Nepos: ibid. nos. 23, 25-6. -
Florentinus: CIL III 87 + 1414810, Petra; Lewis no. 16. - Horse Guards: AE 1915.
42 = Sm. 332; cf. Speidel, Riding for Caesar (1978) 49, 62. - arch, statues: C.B.
Welles, in C.H. Kraeling, Gerasa. City of the Decapolis (New Haven 1938) nos. 58,
143-5.
47 Petra 'Hadriane': Lewis, Greek Papyri (1989) no. 25. - coins: Toynbee 47 ff.; BMC
III 489, 519.
48 coins: Toynbee 117 ff.; BMC III 493 f. - Sepphoris: note 41 above.
49 Dio 69.12.1-2. - coinage: Mildenberg, Bar Kokhba War (1984) 100 f. - promise:
Schiirer, Jewish People I (1973) 535 f.; Smallwood, The Jews (1976) 434 ff.
50 Cf. on the foundation of Aelia Capitolina e.g. Isaac, Talanta 12-13 (1980-1) 31 ff.;
Zahrnt, in Olshausen and Sonnabend (eds), Stuttgarter Kolloquium (1991) 463 ff.
- for the inferred principle that provinces with legionary garrison should have one
colonia per legion, Mocsy, Pannonia (1974) 94. - Bostra: D. Kennedy and D. Riley,
Rome s Desert Frontier from the Air (London 1990) 125 and figs. 71-2.
51 road-building: Applebaum, Prolegomena (1976) 19 f.; Smallwood, The Jews (1976)
431 f., 436 f.; Isaac and Oppenheimer, JJS 36 (1985) 40 f. - coinage: Mildenberg,
Bar Kokhba War (1984) 99. - Tineius: Eck, Chiron 13 (1983) 169.
52 Dio 69.11.1; HA Had. 14.4. - Gaza: see next note - Caesarea: Schiirer, Jewish People
I (1973) 542 note 122; Smallwood, Jews (1976) 432 note 13. - Tiberias:
Epiphanius, Panarion 30.12. - talmudic stories: discussed by Schafer, Bar Kokhba
(1981) 236 ff., except for the conversations with R. Joshua, which he regards as 'of
no value for the historical Hadrian'.
53 Gaza's new era: Weber, Hadrianus (1907) 244 f.; M. Rosenberger, City-Coins of
Palestine II (Jerusalem 1975) 54 ff. - festival: Chron. Pasch. I 474. - that Gaza
belonged to Judaea is clear from Pliny, NH 12.64. — for the date of arrival in Egypt,
see Chapter 19, note 4.
CHAPTER 19 DEATH IN T H E NILE

1 Juvenal 15.1 f.; 27 ff., 44 ff.; Epiphanius, De mens, etpond. 14.
2 Titianus: CP99; Thomasson, Laterculil (1984) 348 f. -Viceroy: #£22.2 (1954)
2356 f.
347
3 Dio 69.11.1. HA Had. 14.4; Appian, BC2.86; Anth. Pal. 9.402; Appian, Syriaca 50;
cf. Pekary, BHAC 1970 (1972) 195 ff.
4 fourteenth year: Vogt, Alex. Miinzen (1924) I 102 f., II 53. - later version, ibid.
54. - plans for new polir. Zahrnt, ANRW2A0A (1989) 676 f. - taboo: Pliny, NH
5.57.
5 sixteenth year issue: Vogt, Alex. Miinzen (1924) I 104 f. - Sarapis talisman: CP]157
= Sm. 516. - other gods: Vogt II 53 ff.
6 personified province: Toynbee 28 ff.; BMClll 342, 379, 504 ff, 531. - Nilus: BMC
III 347 f., 514 ff - floods low in 130-1: Bonneau, Crue (1964) 346 f., 351.
7 Alexandria: Toynbee 39 ff; BMClll 339, 344, 487 f, 507 f.
8 Eusebius-Jerome, Chron. 197 Helm; vers. Arm. 164 Schoene. - new quarter:
Calderini, Dizionario I i (1935) 89 f., has some of the papyri references, completed,
with new evidence, by P.M. Fraser, 'A Syriac Notitia Urbis Alexandrinae\ Journal of
Egyptian Archaeology 37 (1951) 103-8, at 104 ff. A 'Hadrianic Library' (a kind of
archive) had already been created, in existence in AD 127: Calderini 104. - Sema:
Strabo 17.1.8, 794. - body: Suetonius, D. Aug. 18.1; Dio 51.16.5.
9 On the Mouseion: RE 16 A (1933) 801 ff. - library: RE 3 A (1897) 409 ff. - Strabo's
description: 17.1.8, 793 f. - Polemo: Philostratus, V. soph. 1.25.3. - Dionysius: ibid.
1.22.3. - Chaeremon: PIR2 C 706. - Dionysius: CP 46. - Balbillus: CP 15. -
Vestinus: CP 105.
10 Hadrian at the Mouseion: HA Had. 20.2. - For the following, cf. above: Pancrates
(p. 241), Numenius (p. 252), Dionysius (p. 252 f), Mesomedes (p. 252), Paion (p.
251), Balbilla (pp. 250 f.). - Heliodorus: his presence inferred from the birth of his
son at Alexandria, as revealed by the papyrus published by A.K. Bowman, 'A letter
of Avidius Cassius?', JRS 60 (1970) 20-6 = Ol. 185, the birth being dated to
130-131 by Syme, 'Avidius Cassius. His age, rank and quality', BHAC 1984/5
(1987) 207-22 = RP V (1988) 689 ff, at 215 f = 695 f.
11 On the tondU I follow Kahler, Villa (1950) 177 ff; Lambert, Beloved(1984) 118 f;
Grenier and Coarelli, MEERA 98 (1986) 252. - royal beast: Aymard, Chasses (1951)
416 ff. - Hadrian's lion-kill: HA Had. 26.3. - medallion: Strack 129. - Athenaeus
15.677 d-f.
12 POxy 1085.
13 Cf. note 11 above on the tondi.
14 Canopus: Juvenal 15.44 ff. ; Strabo 17.1. 6 f, 800 f - Villa: HA Had. 26.5; cf now
Grenier, MEERA 101 (1989) 925 ff. - Germanicus: Tacitus, Ann. 2.60 f.
15 L. Macedo: CP 109. On II Traiana and related problems, Isaac and Roll, ZPE 33
(1979) 149 ff.; Keppie, in Kasher et al. (eds), Greece and Rome (1990) 54 ff.
16 Proculus: CP 113. - Naucratis: RE 16.2 (1935) 1954 ff.
17 Strabo on Heliopolis: 17.1.29, 806, cf. Herodotus 2.3, 7-9. - Papyrus: ZPE 33
(1979) 262.
18 magical papyrus: K. Preisendanz, Papyri Graeci Magici IV (2nd edn, Stuttgart 1973)
2441 ff.; ri.D. Betz, The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation (Chicago 1985) 82 f.
- Lucian: Philopseudes 34 ff.
19 kondy. Athenaeus 11, 478a.
20 phoenix: Van den Broek, Myth (1972), especially 70 ff., 105 ff. Tacitus, Ann. 6.28
believed the phoenix returned after 1461 years. - Censorinus: De die natali 21.
21 On Memphis: RE 15.1 (1931) 660 ff., especially 675 ff. (Ptah), 680 f. (Apis), 684
(Imhotep), 65 ff. (Serapis). - temple of Hadrian there: Weber, Hadrianus (1907) 258.
22 ILS 1046, 1046b = Sm. 237a-b. - hated: HA Had. 23.5-6.
23 cleruchs: Montevecchi, in Neronia IV (1990) 188 f.; Zahrnt, ANRW2A0A (1989)
686. - Berenice, Arsinoe: Weber, Hadrianus (1907) 258.
24 December: Van Groningen, Studi Calderini-Paribeni II (1956) 253 ff. - May:
Sijpestein, Historia 18 (1969) 109 ff. - Hellenised: cf. in general J. Kriiger,
348
Oxyrhynchos. Studien zur Topographie und Literaturrezeption (Frankfurt 1990). -
victory celebration: CPJ450.
25 Hermopolis: Sijpestein, ZPE 88 (1991) 89 f.; Lewis, RASP 30 (1993) 29. - 22, 24
October: Weber, Drei Unters. (1911) 22; Graindor, Athenes (1934) 159 f., on
Plutarch, De hide et Osiride 356C; Lambert, Beloved (1984) 127.
26 Dio 69.11.2-4. - Paulina: cf. Grimm, in Festschr. Parlasca (1990) 33 ff.
27 HA Had 14.5-7; Victor, Cues. 14.5-7.
28 Lanuvium: 7157212 = Sm. 165; cf. Voisin, MEFRA 99 (1987), especially 262 ff. -
various gods: cf. now Voisin, Mel. Le Glay (1994) 730 ff. - drowned . . . divine:
Herodotus 2.90; Tertullian, De baptismo 5; cf. F.L. Griffith, 'Herodotus 11.90.
Apotheosis by drowning', Zeitschrift fiir Agyptische Sprache 46 (1910) 132-4; S.
Eitrem, 'Tertullian de baptismo 5, sanctified by drowning', Classical Review 38
(1924) 69; S. Morenz, 'Zur Vergottlichung in Agypten', Zeitschrift fiir Agyptische
Sprache 84 (1959) 132-43 ; Lambert, Beloved (\984) 125. - devotio: RE 5.1 (1903)
277 ff.
29 Dio 69.11.2. - Balbillus: Suetonius, Nero 36.1; Tacitus, Ann. 15.47.
30 Cf. U. v. Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Der Glaube der Hellenen II (Berlin 1932) 483
note 2; Yourcenar, Memoires (1951) 187; Lambert, Beloved (1984) 128 ff. - note
e.g. Lucian, Vera hist. 28: 'never have commerce with a boy of more than eighteen';
and similar sentiments in Anth. Pal. 12.4, 12, 2.5-1.
31 30 October: thus in the Chron. Pasch. I 223 (albeit under the year 122). - Bes:
Weber, Drei Unters. (1911) 20, 21; Graindor, Athenes (1934) 14; Follet, Athenes
(1976) 62; but cf. Lambert, Beloved (1984) 127, for caution.
32 Thebes: below and notes 33-4. - Germanicus: Tacitus, Ann. 2.61. - Hadrian's
Gate: Weber, Hadrianus (1907) 257, and RE 19.2 (1938) 2113, can only cite
Baedeker for this. Cf. also E. Bernand, Les inscriptions grecques de Philae II (Paris
1969), Plates 79, 83-5, 107.
33 Bernand, Colosse (1960), nos. 28-31. No. 32 is a fragmentary dedication by Sabina
herself. - Titianus: ibid. 24.
34 Bernand, Colosse (1960) nos. 28 ff. No. 29, line 12, is amended by M.L. West,
'Balbilla did not save Memnon's soul', ZPE 25 (1977) 120. - Strabo on the
Colossus: 17.1.46, 816. - lesbian: Bowie, in Russell (ed.), Antonine Literature (1990)
62.
35 Bernand, Colosse (1960) nos. 11-12, cf. Robert, in Stele Kontoleon (1980) 1 ff. -
Faustus: Bernand no. 60; dated to Hadrian's time by Piso, Fasti (1993) 214 ff. The
expansion of CETACO[S] is my own.
36 Choiak: Weber, Hadrianus (1907) 257. - birthday: ILS7212 = Sm. 165. - further
itinerary: Sijpestein, Historia 18 (1969) 112 ff. (who goes astray in making the hunt
later, p. 115).
37 Mesomedes: Suda, s.v.; HA Ant. Pius 7.8; PIR2 M 503. - Numenius: Suda, s.v.
- Curium: Lebek, ZPE 12 (1973) 101 ff. - Pancrates: Athenaeus 15.677 d-f. -
Tebtunis papyrus: Papiri della R. Universita di Milano I (Milan 1937), 174 ff.
38 Dionysius' poem is now available with Greek text and German translation by K.
Brodersen, Dionysius von Alexandria. Das Lied von der Welt (Hildesheim 1994). His
dating (p. 11) to early in the reign is, however, unconvincing; cf. below on the River
Rhebas. - acrostichs: lines 112-34, 513-32. - Gades: lines 11, 65, 176, 451, 456.
- Adria: lines 92, 100, 102, 380, 481. - Carthage: lines 145-7. -Tiber: lines 352-4.
- Ilium: lines 815-18. - Rhebas: lines 794-6, explained by Bowie, in Russell (ed.),
Antonine Literature (1990) 71, as a compliment to Antinous.
39 AE 1991. 1461, Heraclea Pontica, shows that the name 'Antinoean' had already
been assumed by the actors' association before the end of AD 130. Lambert, Beloved
(1984), 177 ff., gives full coverage of the Antinous cult. - Eunostus: RE 6.1 (1907)
1136 f.
349
40 Zahrnt, ANRW2.10.1 (1989) 677 ff.; Montevecchi, in Neronia IV (1990) 183 ff.
41 road: Sm. 423. - Antinoeia: Bulletin epigraphique 1952, no. 180.
42 Weber, Hadrianus (1907) 249 ff., led the way in interpreting these names. A fuller
list than that available to Weber is provided by Calderini, Dizionario I 2 (Madrid
1966) 106 ff. 'Meleitorios' (given here, p. 108, under Pauleinios as well as
Osirantinoeios) must surely be a misreading of Kleitorios. - Paulina: cf. note 26,
above.
43 The original location of the obelisk at Antinoopolis, not at Rome (or Tivoli), is now
established by A. Grimm and D. Kessler, in Meyer (ed.), Obelisk (1994) 84 ff.,
whose translation is here followed.
44 most learned: the Egyptologist P. Derchain, Le dernier Obelisque (Brussels 1987), has
contributed an engaging fiction about one of these persons. - coins: Vogt, Alex.
Munzen (1924) II 53. - games: Bulletin epigraphique 1952, no. 180. - Philadelphian
contest: L. Moretti, Iscrizioniagonistichegreche (Rome 1953) 244 ff., no. 84, discussed
by Grimm, in Festschr. Parlasca (1990) 39 f. - sacrifice: Seneca, Quaest. nat. 4.2.7.
45 new appointments: Eck, Chiron 13 (1983) 172. - Salvius Julianus: ILS 8973 = Sm.
236; Digest 46.336 indicates that he was in Egypt. - Heliodorus: cf. note 10, above.
- Caesernii: AE 1957. 135 = Sm. 195; ILS 1068.
46 BMClll 1552 f., 1617; Strack 138; A.C. Levi, M78 (1948) 30 ff; cf. for a different
interpretation Ritner, in Simpson (ed.), Religion and Philosophy (1989) 103 ff.
CHAPTER 20 ATHENS AND JERUSALEM

1 weapons: Dio 69.12.2, cf. HA Had. 11.1. - hideaways: Dio 69.12.3. - Antinous
statue at Caesarea: R. Savignac, Revue biblique 13 (1904) 84, no. 2.
2 Syria 'again': Dio 69.12.2. - Cilicia coins: Toynbee 69; BMClll 490. - credentials:
cf. C.P. Jones, Dio Chrysostom (1978) 75; ample detail in Strubbe, Ancient Society
15-17 (1984/6) 253 ff., for these aspirations to be Hellenic in origin.
3 ceased to exist: Syme, 'Observations on the province of Cilicia', in Anatolian Studies
Buckler (Manchester 1939) 299-332 = RPl (1979) 120 ff., especially 325 ff. = 141
ff. - own koinon: Ziegler, Studien zum antiken Kleinasien III (1995) 183 ff.
4 'no mean city': Act. apost. 21.39. — enthusiasm for philosophy: Strabo 14.5.13, 673
f. - Athenodorus: Strabo 14.5.14, 674 f.; PIR2 A 1288. - Dio Chrysostom: Or. 34.
7-14; 45-53; 9; 34; 38-42; 21-33. Cf. C.P Jones, Dio Chrysostom (1978) 76 ff.
5 rivalries: - Tarsus Argive: Strabo 14.5.12, 673. - Olba, Mallus: id. 14.5.16, 675 f.;
cf. Ziegler, in Hodl and Grabmayer (eds), Leben in der Stadt (1995) 86 ff, 95. -
'three eparchiae: AE 1961. 320; ILS8827; cf. AE 1938. 4 (Severan).
6 Digest 22.5.3.1; 3 (Rufinus); 4 (Maximus); cf. Thomasson, Laterculil (1984) 419
f; 2 (Verus). Williams, JRS 66 (1976) 71, infers that Hadrian composed the letters
himself.
7 Paion: above, p. 240. - Attalia: IGR III 771; ibid. 773, a tower flanking the Arch,
was donated by Domitia Sancta, who also set up a statue to Hadrian's sister Paulina;
cf. Halfmann, Itinera (1986) 131. - Perge and the Plancii: JRS 55 (1965) 56 ff;
Halfmann, Senatoren (1979) 128 f., no. 31; cf. Syme, 'Legates of Cilicia under
Trajan', Historia 18 (1969) 352-66 = RPll (1979) 774 ff., at 365 f. = 787 f.
8 evil reputation: Strabo 14.5.7, 671, cf. Cicero, II Verr. 4.21. - its origin and early
history: RE 19.2 (1938) 1876 ff. - new gateway: TAM II 3, 1187 = SEG XXXI
1299. - statues: Tituli Asiae Minoris 11 3, 1191, 1194, 1193, 1192. - Sufenas and
Atticus consuls: Roxan III 159; cf. Worrle, Stadt und Fest (1988) 39 ff., for Sufenas'
governorship. Atticus was also, it seems, made a member of the prestigious XVviri
sacris faciundis, Ameling, Herodes (1983) II 132 f.
9 second Temple Wardenship: the date when this was approved remains uncertain:
IKEph 428, honouring Ti. Claudius Piso Diophantus, may identify the man who
350
successfully petitioned Hadrian; cf. further C.P. Jones, JHS 113 (1993) 149 ff. -
statue-base: AE 1977. 797 = IKEph 734; Champlin, ZPE21 (1976) 78 ff., makes a
good case for identifying the polyonymous honorand with young Fuscus. I cannot
follow him in all details. - sculpture: thus Hahland, JOAI 41 (1954) 54 ff.
10 coins: Toynbee 49 ff.; BMC III 344 fi, 490, 519 f. - two further new cities:
Schwertheim, Epigr. Anat. 6 (1985) 37 ff; id., LKHadrianoi (1987) 156 ff, on nos.
56, 129. - back to Cyzicus, local office: Merkelbach and Schwertheim, Epigr. Anat.
2 (1983) 149.
11 coins: Toynbee 122 £; BMC III 352, 494.
12 winter for the third time: clear from SLG3 842, Epidaurus, cf. Halfmann, Ltinera
(1986) 208. - Mysteries, fragmentary letter: A. Plassart, Fouilles de Delphes III 4
(Paris 1970), 308; but Follet, Athenes (1976) 109, prefers to refer the Mysteries there
mentioned to new ones for Antinous. - letter of 132: Sm. 445 = Ol. 85.
13 priestess: IGlllWl2 3575 = Sm. 71a. - Pausanias: 1.3.2. - Dio: 69.16.1-2.
14 HA Had. 19.2 (by mishap this sentence is omitted in A.R. Birley, Lives of the Later
Caesars (1976) 78). For comparison, cf. Robert, Gladiateurs (1940) 313.
15 Arrian, Periplus 6.2, 10.1 (Latin report); Trapezus (1.1-2.2), Dioscurias (10.3-4);
Athens (3.4-4.1); Apsarus (6.1); manoeuvres (3.1, 6.2, 10.3); Phasis fort (9.3-5);
Amisus (15.3, cf. Pausanias 1.18.6); Rhea (9.1); 11.2-3, 18.3 (client kings).
16 Cotys: Arrian, Periplus 17.3, cf. Phlegon, EGrH257, fr. 17; PLR2 J 276. - island of
Achilles: Periplus 21.1-23.4.
17 Digest 49.14.2.1.
18 seven years before: Dio 69.16.1 - if this dating can be pressed; Jones, Chiron 26
(1996) 33 f, believes 'holding the highest office' in this passage ought refer to his
archonship, which would put it back in 112, and wonders if he might have been
archon again, viz. for 131/2. I prefer to believe that Dio's text, as we have it, is
garbled. - Pausanias: 1.18.6. - Dio: 69.16.1. - HA: Had. 13.6. - Erichthonius:
Pausanias 1.24.7.
19 Pausanias 1.5.5; 1.18.9.
20 Philostratus, V. soph. 1.25.3.
21 temenosr. thus Willers, Panhell Programm (1990) 36 ff, 54 ff. - chairman: Sm. 257;
CP 81; cf. below, note 28 to Chapter 21. - members: Spawforth and Walker, JRS
75 (1985) 79 ff; cf. above, note 14 to Chapter 18, on the question of membership.
Cf. also Strubbe, Ancient Society 15-17 (1984/6) 280 ff, on eagerness to prove
Hellenic credentials. -Amisus: Arrian, Periplus 15.3.
22 Panhellenia: Worrle, Chiron 22 (1992) 337 ff, is able to show conclusively that they
were first held in 137. - games at Athens: Geagan, ANRW2JA (1979) 397 f, has
a useful summary. - portrait in Parthenon: Pausanias 1.24.7. - Benjamin, Hesperia
32 (1963) 57 ff, has a valuable discussion of the numerous altars (almost 100)
honouring Hadrian at Athens.
23 Achaia coins: Toynbee 25 ff; BMC III 349, 517 f - Hadrian's Gate: IGll2 5185.
On the Gate and its significance, Willers, Panhell. Programm (1990) 68 ff. - new
deme: Zahrnt, Chiron 9 (1979) 393 ff, convincingly interprets Phlegon, FGrH257,
fr. 19.
24 no account: Dio 69.13.1. - Solomon's tomb: id. 69.14.2. - insurgents: id. 69.12.3.
There is a vast literature on the Jewish war under Hadrian: I note here Schiirer,
Jewish People I (1973) 534 ff; Smallwood, The Jews (1976) 428 ff; Applebaum,
Prolegomena (1976); Schafer, Aufstand (1981); id., in Davies and White (eds),
Tribute to Vermes (1990) 281 ff; Mildenberg, Coinage (1984); Isaac and
Oppenheimer, JJS 36 (1985) 33 ff. The fact that the documents discovered over
thirty years ago have still not been published in full hardly needs re-emphasising (cf.
Millar, Near East (1993) 545 f.). Some were published in DJDll; others by Y. Yadin
in the Israel Exploration Journal 11 (1961), 12 (1962); and those in Greek are now
351
available in Lewis, Greek Papyri (1989). For a new checklist see now Cotton et al.,
JRS 85 (1995) 229-31, nos. 293-331, giving DJDII numbering or for the unpub-
lished ones PYadin*.
25 sally-ports: Gichon, JQR 77 (1986) 15 ff. - Marcellus and C. Julius Severus: IGR
III 174 = IIS 8826 = Sm. 216. - XXII Deiotariana: Keppie, in Kasher et al. (eds),
Greece and Rome (1990) 54 ff., is the latest discussion.
26 Fronto, De bello Parthico 2, p. 221 van den Hout: quid? avo vestro Hadriano
imperium optinente quantum militum a Iudaeis, quantum a Britannis caesum? — Dio
69.14.3, 13.1-2.
27 'Other races': cf. Applebaum, Prolegomena (1976) 57 £; Mor, JJS 36 (1985) 200 ff.
28 different category: cf. Isaac, SCI7 (1983/4) 68 ff. - Christian writers: Justin, I Apol.
31.6; Eusebius, HE 4.6.2; 4.8.6; Jerome, Chron. 201 Helm; Vers. arm. 168 ff.
Schoene; Adv. Rufinum 3.31; Orosius 7.13.4. - On Bar Kokhba: Schafer, Aujstand
(1981) 51 ff., discusses the sources systematically; cf. Mildenberg, Coinage (1984)
55 ff., 73 ff.
29 earliest document: Cotton et Û JRS 85 (1995) no. 293 = PYadin *42 (April 132).
- latest: ibid. no. 310 = DJD II no. 22 (new reading).
30 Numbers: 24.17. - R. Akiba: Schurer, Jewish People I (1973) 543 f.; Schafer,
Aufstand (1981) 55 f. - star sign: Mildenberg, Coinage (1984) 44 f. - Ezekiel:
37.24-5.
31 Akiba: cf. especially Herr, Scr. Hier. 23 (1972) 113 ff. - coinage: Mildenberg,
Coinage (1984) 69 ff. - symbols: I have tried to summarise Mildenberg 123 ff. -
letter from Sh'imon: Cotton et al., JRS 85 (1995) no. 317 = PYadin *52.
32 Eleazar the Priest: Schurer, Jewish People I (1973) 544; Mildenberg, Coinage (1984)
29, 61 ff. - Jerusalem: recapture by the rebels doubted e.g. by Schafer, Aufstand
(1981) 78 ff. and Mildenberg, Coinage (1984) 17, 31, 49. Cf. further note 37,
below. - re-circumcision: Smallwood, The Jews (1976) 445; Schafer 45 ff. - Rabbi:
Schurer 544 note 139; Mildenberg 30, on PYadin *56.
33 PYadin *56, *54, *55 (En Geddi). - DJD II no. 43 (Galileans). - PYadin *56
(Romans). - brothers: e.g. PYadin *49, *59.
34 Schafer, Aufstand {1981) 173 (missiles), 144, 170 (finger), 171 f. (blasphemy; cf.
Psalms 60.12); 148 (brothers).
35 Justin: Dial. 1.3, 9.3.; I Apol. 31.6. - Eusebius-Jerome, Chron: 201 Helm; Eusebius,
HE: 4.6.2 - Jerome: Adv. Rufinum 3.31.
36 documents: listed by Cotton et al., JRS 85 (1995) 229 ff. - Babatha: N. Lewis, Greek
Papyri (1989). - Salome: Cotton, ZPE 105 (1995) 171 ff. - possible reprisals: thus
Smallwood, The Jews (1976) 442.
37 caves in Lower Galilee: Gichon, JQR 77 (1986) 26 ff; id., Rev. int. hist. mil. 42
(1979) 88, 95. - cave near Jericho: J. Geiger, reviewing Millar, Near East (1993), in
Scripta Classica Israelica 13 (1994) 200, referring to Eretz-Israel 23 (1992) 276 ff.
(in Hebrew). - coins as basis: Mildenberg, Coinage (1984) 22 ff, 85 ff. - supplies
by ship: PYadin *49 refers to a ship. - Jerusalem: it is clearly an argumentum ex
silentio that the rebels did not re-take Jerusalem: lack of rebel coins found there and
no reference to it in the documents. Yet the coin-legends show the immense impor-
tance attached to the Holy City. It should be reflected that the legionary fortress
of X Fretensis has still not been located, cf. Geva, IE] 34 (1984) 239 ff., for a
discussion. This would have been a necessary target for rebel attack and a likely base.
Further evidence may one day be forthcoming.
38 Dio: 69.14.3. - Talmudic sources: Schafer, Aufstand (1981) 138 ff. - Clemens: IIS
2081 = Sm. 300. - expeditio: IIS 1065, 1071, 1092, CIL VI 3505; cf. V.
Rosenberger, Bella et expeditiones (Stuttgart 1992) 97 ff., against Halfmann, Itinera
(1986) 209 f., already criticised by Syme, 'Journeys of Hadrian', ZPE 73 (188)
159-70 = RP VI (1991) 346 ff, at 166 f. = 354 f, and Barnes, JRA 2 (1989) 254.
352
39 Plew, Unters. (1890) 89 ff., was the first, it seems, to exploit Apollodorus. Blyth,
GRBS 33 (1992) 127 ff., has shed doubt on the authenticity of the attribution to
Apollodorus of the Poliorcetica.
40 whole world': Dio 69.13.3. - Severus: AR. Birley, Fasti (1981) 106 ff. - Sisenna:
ibid. 109 f.
41 Quinctianus: AE 1957. 135 = Sm. 195. - Priscus: IIS 1092. - Cornelianus: RIB
814. - Urbicus: ILS 1065 = Sm. 220. tribune: CIL VI 3505 = Sm. 331. - man from
Cilicia: CIIX 1769, cf. E. Birley, The Roman Army (1988) 316 ff.
42 X Fretensis: CIL XVI, App. no. 13. - Voconius: ILS 8828. - Statianus: ILS 1068.
- Proculus: ILS 1341; CP 113. - Dio: 69.13.3.
43 Eusebius: HE 4.6.2. - Severus: Dio 69.13.3.
44 Eusebius: HE4.63. - rabbinic story: Schafer, Aujstand(l984) 138. Cf. p. 359, below.
45 fragmentary letter: DJD II no. 45. - imp. II: CIL II 478; VI 974 - Severus: ILS 1056
= Sm. 217 - Marcellus: AE 1934. 231. - less generous: E. Birley, Roman Britain
(1953) 24.
46 name changed: thus in CIL XVI 87 of November 139. - Dio's figure: 69.14.1. -
captives sold: Chron. Pasch. I 474; cf. Jerome, In Jerem. 21.15, In Zach. 11. 4-5. -
Christian writers: Eusebius, HE 4.6.3; Jerome, In Sophon. 1. 15 f. - statue of
Hadrian: Jerome, In Esaiam 1.2.9. - temple of Jupiter: id., Comm. in Matt. 24.15.
- Aphrodite: Eusebius, V. Constantini 3.26. - coins: Schiirer, Jewish People I (1973)
554 f. - pig: Jerome, Chron. 201 Helm.
47 statue: Foerster, Atiqot 17 (1985) 139 ff; Gergel, AJA 95 (1994) 231 ff. - pieces
from Egypt, etc.: Hoffmann, in Festschr. Helck (1984) 585 ff. (but that Hadrian
fought a local war in Egypt is unconvincing). - coins: BMCUl 475, 485; A.C. Levi,
NC8 (1948) 30 ff.
48 Pausanias: 1.5.5. - Tertullian: Depraescript. 7.9.
CHAPTER 21 THE BITTER E N D

1 curt response: IGRl 149 = Ol. 86. - Quinctianus: AE 1957. 135 = Sm. 195.
2 Moesia coins: Toynbee 125; BMCUl 495, 501. - Major: CILXVl 78; Eck, Chiron
13 (1983) 172, assumes he was there some time before 134. - Dacia: Toynbee 78
f; BMCUl 498 f, 510 f. - younger Bassus: first attested in Dacia 13 December
135, ILS 2301; Piso, Fasti (1993) 53 f.
3 exercitus Delmaticusr. Strack 143, no. 796 (not in BMC III). - Vitrasius: Eck, Hist.
Aug. Coll. Parisinum (1991) 189 ff. - temple to Antinous: AE 1972. 500,
Municipium D(ar)danorum. - coins: .8MCIII 534 f.
4 CIL III 10281 had Servian us and another consul, whose name (in the ablative) end-
ing in O and between 6 and 9 letters long, was erased. In several other inscriptions
Servianus is named as consul without a colleague, A. Stein, RE 10.1 (1917) 887 f.
C. Julius Proculus {cos. sujf. 109) may have been the original colleague. For evidence
that he was labelled 'cos. II\ note 22 to Chapter 12, above. (Perhaps he just
happened to die at the turn of the year and was replaced by Varus.) - Paulina,
Fuscus: above, pp. 247, 262.
5 Strack 126 f, 133 f.; BMCUl 315 ff, 323 f, 393 note, 450 ff, 457,464 f., 474, 478.
6 Nepos: CIL XVI 78 (April 134) - III Cyrenaica in fighting: ILS 1071 = Sm. 234. -
Dio: 69.16.3.
7 Dio 69.8, cf. 66.17.2 (Vespasian).
8 Nepos: HA Had. 23.4, cf. 23.6; 4.2; 15.2. - Attianus, Septicius: 15.2. - Gentianus:
23.4, cf. 23.6. - Polyaenus (cf. Pliny, Ep. 10.70-1), Marcellus (PIR2 N 55): 15.3. -
Eudaemon, Heliodorus: 15.3, 15.15.5, both later Prefect of Egypt, Eudaemon in
142/3 as successor of Heliodorus, appointed in 137: Thomasson, Laterculil (1984)
349. - Favorinus: 16.10. - exile: the inference from the discovery of his 'On Exile':
353
A. Barigazzi, Favorino di Arelate: Opere (Florence 1966) 347 ff.; the work is not
regarded as evidence for a real exile by Swain, ZPE79 (1989) 150 ff, but merely as
an oratorical exercise.
9 Celer: the post is known from Philostratus, V. soph. 1.22.3; cf. HA M. Aur. 2.4,
Verus2.5\ M. Aurelius, Med. 8.25. - Boeotia: Ol. 112, cf. 108-11. - Cyrene: Ol.
120. - Didyma: Ol. 87.
10 Polemo: Philostratus, V. soph. 1.25.3. - Herodes: ibid. 2.1.8.
11 Dio: 69.4.1-5. For the view that the story of his death cannot be right, Ridley,
Athenaeum 77 (1989) 551 ff. E.L. Bowie suggests to me that the supposed criticism
about the goddesses being unable to get up may even have been a subtle compli-
ment, since the same had been said about Phidias' celebrated statue of Zeus at
Olympia, Strabo 8.3.30, 353.
12 Victor, Cues. 14.1-4. On the Athenaeum, Braunert, BHAC 1963 (1964) 9 ff;
Boatwright, City (1987) 207 f. - Salvius: Jerome, Chron. 198 Helm, assigns his
redaction of the edict to 131, which in any case looks the most likely year for his
quaestorship, the office he held when carrying out the task {ILS 8973): Syme, 'The
jurists approved by Antoninus Pius', BHAC 1986/89 (1991) 201-17, at 206 f.
13 Boatwright, City (1987) 161 ff.
14 Boatwright, City (1987) 190 ff. There is copious literature on the tondi: cf. for recent
contributions Oppermann, Nikephoros 4 (1991) 211 ff.; Turcan, CRAI1991, 53 ff.
My own view is close to that of Kahler, Villa (1950) 177 ff., and Coarelli, in Grenier
and Coarelli, MEFRA 98 (1986) 252 f. (although their attempt to locate the original
position of the Antinous obelisk on the Palatine must be rejected, above, p. 256,
note 43). Oppermann 216 f takes a basically similar position. He and Turcan both
give good reasons for amending the traditional order of the eight scenes. Meyer,
Antinoos (1991) 218 ff, cf. id., Obelisk (1994) 153 ff, allows at most a depiction of
Antinous in one tondo out of eight. He also argues that three separate artists were at
work (perhaps because the monument had to be erected quickly, one might suggest).
15 ILS'7212 = Sm. 165; cf. Voisin, MEFRA 99 (1987) 257 ff.
16 Grenier, MEFRA 101 (1989) 925 ff.
17 CIL VI 974; Strack 137; BMClll 335 ff. - crocodile: BMClll 475, 485; A.C. Levi,
NC8 (1948) 30 ff. - 'Typhonians': cf. Frankfurter, JJS 43 (1992) 203 ff. [Cf.
p. 359, below.]
18 Ol. 88, A-C.
19 Dio: 69.15.1. -Alani and Iberia: Wheeler, Flavins Arrianus (1977) 101 ff, 223 ff.,
227 ff. - Mithridates: Karras-Klapproth, Pros. Studien (1988) 85. - envoys: Dio
69.18.2.
20 Arrian's 'deterrence': Wheeler, Flavins Arrianus (1977) 272 ff. - Themistius: Or.
34.8. - IX Hispana: A.R. Birley, Fasti (1981) 220 f.
21 HA: Had. 21.8. - coins: Strack 184 ff; BMClll 474 f. {Roma Aeterna); 334 {Veneris
felicis); 337 f. {votapublico); 471, 483 {liberalitasAug. VI); 472 {liberalitasAug. VII).
22 Arrian, Tactica 32.3; 44.2-3. Cf. Wheeler, GRBS 19 (1978) 351 ff.
23 began to be ill: Dio 69.17.1. - health in Egypt: id. 69.11.3; Victor, Cues. 14.8. -
obelisk: Meyer, Obelisk (1994) 84 ff. - BMClll 318 (no. 603); interpreted by
Hannestad, Anal. Rom. Inst. Dan. 11 (1982) 97 ff. - adoption . . . fraudulent: HA
Had. 4.10; Dio 69.1.1-4.
24 beauty: HA Had. 23.10, cf. Ael. 5.1. - secret oath: Ael. 3.8. - belated amends: thus
Syme, Tacitus (1958) 601, and elsewhere. - bastard: Carcopino, REA 51 (1949) 262
ff. = id., Passion etpolitique (1958) 143 ff.; REA 67 (1965) 67 ff; refuted e.g. by
Syme, 'Ummidius Quadratus, capax imperii, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology
83 (1979) 287-310 = RPlll (1984) 1158 ff., at 300 ff. = 1179 f. - tubercular: Dio
69.17.1. - daughter betrothed: HA M. Aur. 4.5; Prefect at Alban festival: ibid. 4.7,
cf. RE 6.2 (1909) 2213-16. - Marcus as ultimate successor: Pflaum, BHAC 1963
354
(1964) 95 ff., plausibly in my view, explains the choice of L. Commodus in this way;
cf. A.R. Birley, Marcus Aurelius (1987) 40 ff., 232 ff.
25 shows . . . Danube: HA Had. 23.12-13. -Jazyges: Dio 69.15.2. - Quadi: BMCW
Antoninus Pius to Commodus (1940) 204 f., 367 {rex Quadis datus). - adopted son
of Turbo: PIR2¥ 305; Fitz, Verwaltungll (1993) 475 ff. - Nicomedes: Chron. Pasch.
163 - Rogatus: ILS 1450; CP 140. - Maximus: Fitz 483 ff. - coins: Toynbee 133
ff.; BMC III 363 ff., 543 ff. - everyone against: HA Had. 23.11: invitis omnibus.
26 Horoscopes: Hephaestio Thebanus, Apotelesmatica, ed. D. Pingree, 2 vols (Leipzig
1973-4), 2.18.21 ff., quotes three horoscopes supplied by an earlier astrologer,
Antigonus of Nicaea: the first, that of Hadrian, 22-52; the second, 54-61, most
plausibly identified with Acilius Attianus, Caballos, Senadores (1990) 35 f.; the third,
clearly the young Pedanius Fuscus, 62-6. (However, I do not accept that the
passage in Hephaestio 2.18.65, where his parents are said to have met a violent
death, is evidence for them being killed as late as 137.) Almost identical versions are
also given in id. Epit. 4.26.12-56. One passage is omitted in Pingree's edition
from the beginning of Hadrian's horoscope, found only in the Vienna Codex, C
Gr. Vindob. 108, fol. 301 ff. It is printed in the Catalogus codicum astrologorum
Graecorum VI, ed. W. Kroll (Brussels 1902) 68, lines 7-9, and is translated by
Cramer, Astrology (1954) 165; this may allow the dating of Fuscus' attempted coup
to November 137, as suggested by Martin, Providentia (1982) 302. - Dio: 69.17.1.
- HA. see next note.
27 HA: Had. 15.8; 23.2; 23.8, 25.8. - last moments: Dio 69.17.2. On Servianus, cf.
now the lengthy study by Michelotto, in Studi Gatti (1987) 143 ff. I cannot follow
him in all particulars. - 'many others': HA Had. 23.8. - Polyaenus, Marcellus: ibid.
15.4.
28 Cyrene, Barca: Ol. 120, re-edited and reinterpreted by C.P. Jones, Chiron 26 (1996)
47 ff. - Panhellenia first held in 137: Worrle, Chiron 22 (1992) 337 ff. - Herodes
first archon: so Ameling, Herodes (1983) I 61. A likelier year for his presidency,
Philostratus, V. soph. 2.1.5, is perhaps 141. J.H. Oliver, Marcus Aurelius. Aspects of
Civic and Cultural Policy in the East (Princeton 1970) 92 ff., has a helpful collection
of inscriptions registering office-holders in the Panhellenion. For Pulcher, ibid. 118;
also PIR2 C 1424; CP no. 81. - Celer (who may have been ab epistulis tout court
and not just Graecis) is named as Secretary by Philostratus, V. soph. 1.22.3; assumed
identical with the man who taught M. Aurelius and his adoptive brother Lucius, HA
M. Ant. 2.4; Verus 2.5; cf. M. Aur., Med. 8.25. Origin at Corinth suggested by A.R.
Birley, Locus virtutibus patefactus? (Opladen 1992) 48 (with a discussion of known
ab epistulis, 41-54). On known Caninii at Corinth, see now A.J.S. Spawforth,
'Roman Corinth: the formation of a colonial elite', in A.D. Rizakis (ed.), Roman
Onomastics in the Greek East. Social and Political Aspects (Athens 1996) 167-82, at
176 f.
29 death of the Caesar: HA Had. 23.15-16; Ael. 6.6-7 \ Dio 69.20.1. - Sabina: HA
Had. 23.9; Epit. de Caes. 14.8; R.-C. no. 802.
30 wailing: HA Had. 26.8-9. - dreams: 26.10.
31 birthday, adoption: HA Had. 26.6 (with another omen); Dio 69.20.1-5; HA Ant.
Pius 4.4-7.
32 HA Ant. Pius 1.9, 2.8, 2.11, 2.1; Dio 69.21.1-2. - condition: HA Ant. Pius4.5; M.
Aur. 5.1; Verus 2.13 (the last two confused).
33 For the view that Marcus was Hadrian's real choice as heir (but still too young in
138), A.R. Birley, Marcus Aurelius (1987) 232 ff. In particular, the relief from
Ephesus which puts Lucius, the son of Aelius Caesar, in a more prominent position
than Marcus, can hardly support the case that Lucius rather than Marcus was
intended as principal heir, as argued by Barnes, JRS 57 (1967) 65 ff, especially 78 -
as Barnes concedes (78 note 84), with one exception art historians date the relief to
355
the 160s, when Lucius, by then Emperor, was at Ephesus in person, and needed to be
flattered. - Quadratus, Catilius: HA Had. 15.7; 24.6-7 (Catilius had particularly
lamented the adoption of Antoninus.) - Titianus: HA Had. 15.6; Ant. Pius 7.3—4.
34 Turbo: PIR2 M 249; Syme, 'Guard Prefects of Trajan and Hadrian', JRS 70 (1980)
64-80 = RP III (1984) 1276 ff., at 72 ff. = 1290 ff. - successors: HA Had. 24.9,
referring to 138, has praefectis, plural. - Gavius and Petronius: Syme, op. cit. 75 =
1293. - strictness: HA Ant. Pius 8.7. - Severus, Major, Praesens: Thomasson,
Laterculil (1984) 311. - Nepos: Fitz, Verwaltungl (1993) 478 f. - Urbicus: A.R.
Birley, Fasti (\9Sl) 112 ff.
35 Augustus' letter: A. Gellius, NA 15.7.3. - astrologer: HA Had. 16.7; Ael. 3.9.
36 Tibur: HA Had. 23.8. - magic rites, etc.: Dio 69.20.1; 22.1-4.
37 Mastor, Antoninus: HA Had. 24.8-11. - doctor's tombstone: H. Solin, Arctos 21
(1987) 128 ff. - episodes: HA Had. 25.1-5.
38 autobiography: Dio 69.11.2 (Antinous); HA Had. 7.2 (consulars); 1.1 (Aelii); 3.3
(drinking); 3.5 (tribune); Vespasian (Dio 66.17.1); HA Had. 16.1 (Phlegon). It is
worth asking whether Phlegon's work on long-lived persons {Makrobioi) and on
marvels (thaumasid), including sex-changes, may not have reflected Hadrian's
particular interests. Note also that the Olympiads, FGrH 257, fr. 23, had an entry
on Adria, the ultima origo of the Aelii, making it a Greek colony, founded by
Dionysius I of Syracuse.
39 papyrus: PFayum 19 = Sm. 123, as interpreted by Bollansee, Ancient Society 25
(1994) 279 ff.
40 dream: HA Had. 26.10. - poem: ibid. 25.9, discussed fully in the Epilogue that
follows. - calm shattered: Dio 69.22.4.
41 HA Had. 25.6-7; Dio 69.23.2. Baldwin, Gymnasium 90 (1983) 546, argues
persuasively for the meaning 'hated'.
EPILOGUE ANIMULA VAGULA BLANDULA

1 The poem is given in HA Had. 25.9. Its authenticity was authoritatively defended
by Cameron, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 84 (1980) 167 ff. (here quoted).
I have elaborated my interpretation in Laverna 5 (1994) 176 ff., giving particular
weight to Sajdak, Eos 20 (1914-15) 147 ff. (in Polish), summarised in Berl. Ph.
Woch. 36 (1916) 765 ff. Sajdak first spotted the echoes of Ennius, from a fragment
attributed to his Andromache, O. Ribbeck, Tragoediarum Romanorum Fragmenta
(Berlin 1907) I 27, and thus took the adjectives in the fourth line with loca, not ani-
mula. This had already been done by another Polish scholar, K. Morawski, Dwaj
cesarze rzymscy: Tyberyusz i Hadryan (Cracow 1883), 96, whom he cites (I am
grateful to E. Dabrowa for procuring a copy of the relevant part of this work). This
interpretation was first given general currency, independently (it seems), by T. Birt,
Rbmische Charakterkopfe (Leipzig 1913) 329. Bin's translation provoked a debate
which still goes on. - For Hadrian's love of Ennius: HA Had. 16.6. - The text and
punctuation of lines 3-4 was, convincingly in my view (except that he retained
nudula in line 4), established by Mariotti, Studia Florentina (1970) 233 ff. (cf. also
id., Scritti in Memoria di A. Ronconi II (Florence 1988) 11 ff.). I have given an
almost complete bibliography in the Laverna article and therefore refrain from
further references here. I there overlooked V. Bejarano, 'El emperador Adriano ante
la tradicion romana', Pyrenae 11 (1975) 81-98, at 94 with note 71, the only author
apart from myself to accept Sajdak's hesitant conjecture nubila for nudula.
2 HA Had. 14.11 (retaining Hohl's emendation; cf. Callu et al., in their edition,
n. 143, and Baldwin, Gymnasium 101 (1994) 445 f. for alternatives); Epit. de Caes.
14.6.
356
3 Wegner, Hadrian (1956) 72 f.
4 Den Boer, Mnemosyne % (1955) 123.
5 Cf. further A.R. Birley, Laverna 5 (1994) 202 ff., citing among others Andre, ANRW
2.34.1 (1993) 607.
6 Thus the medical man Petrakis, W. Journ. Medicine 132 (1980) 87 ff., who draws
attention to the diagonal earlobe creases visible in Hadrian's portraits, evidently a
symptom of heart disease; further to what is known as 'Type A behavior' , of which
the characteristics are being 'competitive, achievement-oriented, involved in
multiple activities with deadlines, impatient with slowness in others, [liking] to set
a rapid work pace, and [tending] to be hostile and aggressive.' (I owe this reference
to the late Dr D.A. Dixon.)
7 Wegner, Hadrian (1956) 72, cf. 25 f, on the latest portrait-type.
8 In other words, Hadrian does not feature in Book 1 of the Meditations. There are
not many references elsewhere in the work. 8.25, mentioning that Celer survived
Hadrian, may refer to the ab epistulis Caninius Celer; 8.37 names two men called
Chabrias and Diotimus, probably freedmen, who mourned Hadrian. Other
mentions are very impersonal.
9 Fronto, Ad M. Caesarem 2.4.1, p. 25 van den Hout; Princ. Historiae 11, pp. 208 f.
van den Hout (I accept the emendation salicibus by Davies, Latomus 27 (1968)
75 ff).
10 Ael. Aristides, Or. 26 K: the passages cited are Chapters 31-3 and 18 (the Persian
king). On the speech, Swain, Hellenism and Empire (1996) 274 ff., sees less genuine
enthusiam for Rome on the author's part than commonly held. Cf. also id. 256 n. 10
on the birthplace (Hadriani rather than Hadrianutherae). - Another speech preserved
in the works of Aristides, Or. 35 K, addressed to the Emperor himself, has generally
been supposed to be the work of an unknown orator from the next century. A case
has been argued for it being by Aristides himself, and in praise of Antoninus, making
repeated hostile comparisons, scarcely veiled, with his predecessor. Thus C.P. Jones,
'Aelius Aristides EIS BASILEA', JRSG2 (1972) 134-52; id., The EIS BASILEA
again', Classical Quarterly 31 (1981) 224-5. For example, the ruler who is addressed
had refrained unlike 'previous emperors' from 'accusing people of plotting and
punishing them with death or exile' (Chapter 9); and he 'checked . . . the irrational
and violent lunges' in the body of empire (Chapter 13). Still, although Hadrian's
behaviour towards the Greeks was erratic, Jones exaggerates Hadrian's harsh treat-
ment of some of them, JRS 62 (1972) 145: the philosopher Euphrates was not
'ordered', but permitted, to commit suicide; that Apollodorus was 'put death' and
Favorinus 'relegated to an island' is far from certain (cf. pp. 112, note 51; 281, note
11; 341, note 10, above). The attribution has been supported, e.g. by Champlin,
Eronto(1980) 83 ff., 165 andA.R. Birley, MarcusAurelius(1987) 87f, 2 2 7 - b u t t h e
weight of scholarly opinion against now seems decisive: Swain, Hellenism and Empire
(1996) 266 note 50, cites relevant contributions.
11 Dio 69.23.2; 69.9.4; Epit. de Caes. 14.11. - training and discipline: cf. Chapters 10
and 11, above. - concessions: J.B. Campbell, The Emperor and the Roman Army 31
BC-AD 235 (Oxford 1984) 214, 231 ff., 277 f., 285 f., 310 - diplomas: G. Alfoldy,
'Die Truppenkommandeure in den Militardiplomen', in W. Eck and H. Wolff
(eds), Heer undIntegrationspolitik (Cologne-Vienna 1986) 385-436 = id., Romische
Heeresgeschichte (1987) 89 ff, at 400 ff. = 104 ff., discusses naming of officers' origo.
J. Morris and M. Roxan, 'The witnesses to Roman military diplomata', Arheoloski
Vestnik 28 (1977) 299-333, find that from AD 133 onwards the order of witnesses
went by seniority. - militia quarta: E. Birley, Roman Britain and the Roman Army
(1953) 149 = Roman Army Papers (1988) 158 f. - G. Wesch-Klein, 'Hadrian, der
exercitus Romanus und die pax Romana' (forthcoming), offers more on army
matters. I am grateful to the author for letting me see her paper in typescript.
357
12 few further transfers of legions: cf E. Ritterling, RE 12.1 (1924) 1293. - HA on
frontier-works: Had. 11.2; 12.6. - Aristides: Or. 26 K. 80 ff. - Antonine Wall: W.S.
Hanson and G.S. Maxwell, Rome's North-West Frontier. The Antonine Wall
(Edinburgh 1986). - studied insult: cf. A.R. Birley, Trans. Durham and
Northumberland?) (1974) 15 ff. - On Hadrian's frontier policy as a whole, I still
find much to be said for the view of E. Birley, in Carnuntina (1956) 25 ff, repr. in
id., Roman Army Papers (1988) 12 ff. That the artificial running barriers owed some-
thing to Greek traditions of 'walling out the barbarians' is convincingly stressed by
Crow, in Stud. Militargrenzen Roms III (1986) 724 ff. Three ambitious works, two
very recent, have a lot to say about Roman frontier policy: E.N. Luttwak, The Grand
Strategy of the Roman Empire (Baltimore-London 1976); B. Isaac, The Limits of
Empire. The Roman Army in the East (Oxford 1990); Whittaker, Frontiers (1994).
Only the last offers much on Hadrian and I am not particularly convinced. Cf.
further E.L. Wheeler, 'Methodological limits and the mirage of Roman strategy',
journal of Military History 57 (1993) 7-41, 215-40, a detailed review of Isaac and
Whittaker (in the first, French, edition), and comparison with Luttwak. Whittaker
offers a partial reply in Kennedy (ed.), Roman Army (1996) 25 ff. Cf. also above,
notes 10 and 18 to Chapter 11.
13 On the consular 'governors' in Italy, Eck, Historiae Aug. Coll. n.s. I (1991) 183 ff.
- cursus honorum: thus Syme, 'Hadrian and the Senate', Athenaeum 62 (1984) 31-60
= RPW (1988) 295 ff., at 51 ff. = 316 ff. Two other men seem to have been
intended as cos. II ord, P. Metilius Nepos for 128 (PIR2 M 545) and C. Julius
Proculus, perhaps for 134, above, note 22 to Chapter 12, note 4 to Chapter 21. And
on the question of 'eastern' consuls, A.R. Birley, 'Hadrian and Greek senators' ZPE
116 (1997) 225 f. - equestrian ah epist. etc.: HA Had. 22.8, cf. Callu et al., ad loc.
- advocatus fisci: HA Had. 20.6; AE 1975. 408. - Hadrian as 'reformer': e.g.
Hirschfeld, Kais. Verw. (1905) 476 ff.
14 Cf. the judicious restraint of Crook, Consilium (1955), Chapter 5 and App. 3. -
Edict: ILS 8973; Victor, Caes. 19.2; Eutropius 8.17, etc. - HA: especially Had.
8.8-9; 18.1-11; 22.1-8. - rescripts: F. Pringsheim, 'The legal policy and reforms of
Hadrian',//^ 24 (1934) 139-53, at 146. Pringsheim's paper is one of a good many
which attribute far-reaching legal initiatives to Hadrian. Cf. especially d'Orgeval,
Hadrien (1950) and (more restrained) A. d'Ors, 'La signification de l'oeuvre
d'Hadrien dans l'histoire du droit romain', in Les empereurs romains dEspagne (Paris
1965) 147-68. Note the critical review of d'Orgeval by W. Kunkel, Gnomon 24
(1952) 486-91 (repr. in id., Kleine Schriften (Weimar 1974) 602-7). Kunkel like-
wise, in his Herkunft und soziale Stellung der rbmischen Juristen (Weimar 1952) 291
ff., denies the great significance attached to a 'reform' of the consilium principis, to
the Edict and to rescripts. - Latium maius: Gaius, Inst. 1.96; attested by ILS 67'80
(Gigthis) and by implication 6781 (Thisiduo), from the reigns of Pius and Hadrian
respectively; cf. Sherwin-White, Citizenship (1973) 255 f. Cf. also pp. 207, 342
(note 7), above.
15 Dio: 69.5.2-3; 10.1. - HA: 19.2 cf. 20.4-5. - Epit. de Caes.: \4A-5. - Fronto:
Princ. Historiae 11, p. 209 van den Hout. - Athens: Dio 69.16.1-2; HA Had. 13.6;
19.3; 20.4; Pausanias 1.3.2. - Rome: HA Had. 19.9-13. Dr Susan Walker informs
me that M.T. Boatwright is planning a monograph on Hadrian's building in the
provinces, a colossal undertaking. Such a work would nicely complement
Boatwright's Hadrian and the City of Rome (1987). On one aspect of Hadrian's
activity as restorer or 'founder' of Greek cities, cf. Follet, in Letoublon (ed.), Colloque
Chantraine (1992) 241 ff.
16 Cf. above all the various contributions by Zahrnt, especially ANRW 2.10.1 (1989)
669 ff. and in Olshausen and Sonnabend (eds), Kolloquium (1991) 463 ff.
17 Tertullian: ApoL 5.7, omnium curiositatum explorator. curiositas has a pejorative
358
N O T E S T O PAGES 3 0 6 - 7
sense, cf Tertullian, Idol. 9; 10.9. - J u l i a n : Caes. 311 C - D . - HA: Had. 17.8; 26.5.
- Epit. de Caes. 14.6, of which HA Had. 14.11 is surely another version. - Dio:
69.2.5 (mildness); 3.2-3 (ambition, jealousy); 5.1 (strictness . . . skill).
18 Synesius, Ep. 148; De Regno, especially 13 f. - A travelling emperor with a large
entourage of course imposed heavy expenses on all the places he visited. But in effect
this no doubt meant that the rich spent on public works, to the general benefit. In
any case, Hadrian certainly disbursed from imperial funds in many cases. Whether
this - and for example his tax remission of AD 118, cf. above pp. 97 f. and note 16,
or his measures on use of imperial domain, cf. above p. 208 - can be called
'Hadrianic economic policy' is another matter. A good many aspects which could be
discussed under this rubric have had to be omitted from the present study - e.g.,
not a word on the lex metallis dicta of Vipasca (Sm. 439 f.). There are, after all, limits
to what can be covered in a biography.
ADDENDUM
1 Part of a tombstone found at Vindolanda in May 1997 may throw more light on
the troubles in Britain under Hadrian. It commemorates a centurion called
T. Ann[ius? . . J, probably acting commander of the Vindolanda garrison at that
time, [coh. I] Tungrforum], who was 'killed in the war', in bellfo . . . inter]fectus. T h e
dating is not quite certain, however. W h a t appears to be the date by consuls could
refer to the year 134. If so, this officer could have been killed in the Jewish war,
rather than in renewed fighting in northern Britain, as Paul Holder points out to
me, having taken reinforcements from Britain to Judaea.
2 Werner Eck kindly informs me that the supposed evidence for Hadrian becoming
imperator II, which marked the end of the Jewish war, before the end of AD 135 is
highly doubtful, and that the war may have gone on into 136. Further, in his view
the Roman casualties were even higher than has been assumed hitherto (e.g. much
of the original auxiliary garrison of Judaea may have been wiped out). It is to be
hoped that he will soon publish a new study of this question.
359
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371
INDEX
Only limited reference is made to items in the Notes.
PERSONS
Most Romans are listed under their family name; and where applicable consular dates
have been supplied. It was not feasible to construct a detailed entry for Hadrian himself:
references to him in other entries are abbreviated CH.'
Abgarus VII, ruler of Osrhoene, 68 £, Aemilius Juncus, L. (cos. 127), 235 ; in

70 £ Achaia, 282
Acilius Attianus, P., of Italica, H.'s Aemilius Papus, M., Spanish friend of
guardian, 16, 58; date of birth, 327; H., 24, 58, 67, 192; at Tibur, 192
Guard Prefect, 58, 67, 76, 77 f., 84; Aemilius Paulius, L. (cos. II168 BC), 25
urged H. to suppress dissent, 77 f.; Afranius Burrus, Sex., of Vasio, Guard
had 'conspirators' killed, 88, 91, 95; Prefect, 13
dismissed, 91, 96, 281 Agrippa, M. Vipsanius, built original
Acilius Glabrio, M'. (cos. 191 BC), 62 Pantheon, 111
Acilius Glabrio, M \ (cos. ord. 91), 26, 31 Agrippa Postumus, 95
Adamantius, writer on physiognomy, 166 Agrippina, the Elder, 121
Adrius, founder of Hadria, 332 Ajax, Achaean hero, his tomb restored by
Aelian, on tactics, 288 H., 164, 237
Aelii, of Italica, 12, 13, 198, 201, 299 Akiba, Rabbi, 270,
Aelius Aristides, orator, 5, 303, 304, 357 Albucius Silo, C., of Milan, 200
Aelius Caesar, L., see Ceionius Alcibiades, Athenian general, his tomb
Commodus restored by H., 223, 237
Aelius Hadrianus, H.'s great-uncle, 308, Alcibiades, H.'s freedman chamberlain,
309; expert astrologer, 23; predicted 151, 222, 223, 240, 251
H.'s accession, 37 Alexander the Great, emulated by Trajan,
Aelius Hadrianus Afer, P., H.'s father, 65, 72, 73, 75, 78, 131; perhaps by
10, 19, 308, 309; cousin of Trajan's H., 131; at the Granicus, 163; his
father, 12, 309; his career, 14; death, horse, 145; sacrificed to Ocean, 130 f;
16 made shaving fashionable, 61; his body
Aelius Nico, father of Galen, 167 inspected, 239
Aelius Rasparaganus, P., king of Amasis, Pharaoh, 243
Roxolani, 86, 326 Amazaspus, Iberian, 69
Aemilius Arcanus, L., of Narbo, made Amenhotep III, Pharaoh, 250
senator, 146 Ammianus Marcellinus, on Hadrian, 75
373
INDEX
Anchialus, ruler of Heniochi, 69, 225 Antistius Adventus, Q. {cos. c. 167), from
Andreas, Jewish leader in Cyrenaica, Thibilis, 208, 342 f.
74 Antistius Rusticus, L. {cos. 90), of
Aninius Sextius Florentinus, T., governor Corduba, 19
of Arabia, 231 Antonia Tryphaena, princess, at Cyzicus,
Annia Faustina, wife of Antoninus Pius, 162
146 Antonius, M., the Triumvir, 72, 160,
Annii Veri, of Ucubi, 13, 196, 201 180
Annius Gallus, Ap. {cos. ord. 108), 54 Antonius Polemo, see Polemo
Annius Libo, M. {cos. ord. 128), 201 Antonius Saturninus, L.{cos. 82), his
Annius Pythodorus, Athenian, 177 coup attempt, 18, 19
Annius Verus, M. {cos. Ill ord. 126), Antoninus Pius (T. Aurelius Fulvus
grandfather of Marcus Aurelius, 3, Antoninus), the emperor, 79, 150,
114, 196; his sons, 196, 201; 206, 226; his wife, 146; grandfathers,
sons-in-law, 92, 104, 201; 295; father-in-law, 104, 146, 201;
daughter-in-law, 111, 146; favoured by governed part of Italy, 199; proconsul
H., 3, 92; City Prefect, 92, 93, 94, of Asia, 282, 295; adopted by H., 3,
103 f, 114, 125, 146, 173, 196; his 294 ff.; begged him to endure, 297;
consulships, 103 f., 195 £, 201, 280 H.'s letter to, 6, 10, 299; his placid
Annius Verus, M., father of Marcus reign, 303; his vita in the HA, 4
Aurelius, 196 Aper, M. Flavius {cos. ord. 130), 252
Antigonus II Doson, regent of Apollodorus of Damascus, architect, built
Macedonia, 179 Danube bridge, 48, 50, 85; designed
Antigonus of Nicaea, compiled Trajan's buildings at Rome, 56;
horoscopes, 291, 355 relations with H., 56, 112, 282 f; on
Antimachus of Colophon, poet, liked by siege-craft, 4, 273
H., 171 Apollonides, poet, on Tiberius, 173
Antinoe, foundress of Mantinea, 180 Apollonis, Pergamene queen, 162
Antinous, H.'s beloved, 2 £; his home in Apollonius, Syrian, alleged source, 42
Bithynia, 158, 179 f, 185, 253, 262; Apollonius of Tyana, 201
links with Mantinea, 180, 253; Appian, historian, on Italy under H.,
uncertain when H. met him, 158, 185; 199 f; H. restoring Pompeius' tomb,
presumably with H. in Greece, 215 f.; 235 ff.
perhaps hunted boar with H., 223, Apuleius, writer, his novel, 23; on H.'s
262, 283; in Egypt, 158, 185, 240 ff; epitaph for Voconius, 193
on lion-hunt, 241 f., 283, 294; Aquillius Regulus, M., orator, 27
drowned, 3, 247ff., 287, 289, 302; Arbandes, son of Abgarus, 70 f.
deified, 3, 247 ff, 259, 264, 280, Arcadius, the emperor, 307
283 ff, 289, 306, 351; worshipped at Archelaus, Cappadocian king, 225
Mantinea, 180; portraits of, 7, 158, Aristides, of Athens, Christian apologist,
241, 284 f, 336, 354; research on, 8 183; and see Aelius Aristides
Antiochus III, the Great, 62 Arrian (L. Flavius Arrianus), friend of
Antiochus IV Epiphanes, Seleucid king, H., 4, 130, 154, 180, 227; keen
tried to complete Temple of Olympian hunter, 61, 137; at Delphi, 61 f;
Zeus, 2, GAy 183, 228; promoted Zeus perhaps served in Parthian War, 70;
Olympios, 228; admired Romans, 228; his writings, 4; Discourses of Epictetus,
his Jewish policy, 228 ff., 346; 60 ff.; Parthica, 68, 70, 73; Indike,
emulated by H., 2, 228 ff., 276 121, 130; Cynegetica, 137, 180, 205;
Antiochus IV of Commagene, deposed Periplus, 155 f., 225, 263 f.; perhaps
by Vespasian, 62; his grandchildren, with H. in west, 121, 330; perhaps
62, 228, 251 H.'s host at Nicomedia, 157, 326;
Antiochus, prince of Commagene, father proconsul of Baetica, 169, 180, 218,
of Julia Balbilla, 228 337; perhaps with H. in Africa, 205,
INDEX
212; consul, 180, 227; governed Avidius Nigrinus, C. (cos. 110), his father
Cappadocia, 155, 257, 263 f., 287 ffi; and uncle, 62, 88; stepson, 87, 198,
his Tactica, 212, 288 f. 289; as tribune of the plebs, 48, 49,
Arrius Antoninus, Cn.(cos. II 97), 35, 88; prosecuted proconsul of
295 Bithynia, 88; in Greece, 62, 81, 182;
Arrius Clemens, C , centurion, 272 f. at Delphi, 62; at Athens, 63; governor
Artemidorus Capito, doctor, 337 ofDacia, 81, 86 f, 89, 212; his
Artemio, Jewish leader in Cyprus, 7A alleged plot against H., 87, 88, 89,
Arulenus Rusticus, see Junius Rusticus 165, 198, 212; killed, 86, 87 f, 198,
Asander, ruler of Crimea, 156 289
Asudius Curianus, 30 Avidius Quietus, T. (cos. 92), Stoic,
Athambelus, ruler of Mesene, 73 friend of Plutarch, 62, 88
Athenaeus, writer, 5; quotes Pancrates, Avidius Quietus, T. (cos. I l l ) , proconsul
241, 244 f. of Asia, 89, 197, 198
Athenodorus, of Tarsus, 260 Axidares, Parthian prince, 65, 66
Atilius Agricola, Q. Glitius (cos. II103),
45, 48 Babatha, Jewish refugee, 272
Atilius Metilius Bradua, M. (cos. ord. Baccho, beautiful young man, 185
108), 54; governor of Britain, 115, Baebius Macer, Q. (aw. 103), City
152; comes of'H., 115, 125, 134, 152; Prefect, 77 f., 104
proconsul of Africa, 152 Baebius Massa, proconsul of Baetica,
Atilius Titianus, T. (cos. ord. 127), 23 f, 28
alleged conspirator, 296 Baienus Blassianus, Q., equestrian officer,
Attalus I, King of Pergamum, 162 128
Atticus, see Claudius Atticus Bar-Kokhba, see Shim'on Bar-Kokhba
Attius Suburanus, Sex. (cos.II ord. 104), Batnaya b. Meisa, Rabbi, 271
Guard Prefect, 38 f, 60, 319 Ben Aphlul, Jewish officer, 271
Augustalis, slave, 24 Ben Kosiba, see Shim'on Bar-Kokhba
Augustus, the emperor, 5, 18, 29, 38, 45, Bittius Proculus, Q.(cos. 98), Arval, 108
56, 58, 72, 78, 111, 161, 173, 178, Brocchus, Aelius, army officer, 137
180, 183, 184, 186, 195, 207, 214, Bruttius Praesens, C. (cos.II ord. 139),
226, 235, 239, 255; and Spain, 21 f, son-in-law of Laberius Maximus, 67,
144, 147, 148, 149; army policy, 78; his wife, 197 f; in Parthian War,
117 f, 120; his Mausoleum, 38, 99, 67, 70; governed Cilicia, 78;
111, 283; imitated by H., 2, 96, 108, Cappadocia, 101, 154, 161; Lower
111 f., 147, 149, 150, 200 f, 203, Moesia, 161, 173; Syria, 296
296 f.
Aurelius Antoninus, T., see Antoninus Caecilius Classicus, delinquent proconsul,
Pius 48
Aurelius Fulvus, T. (cos. II ord. 85), 295 Caecina Paetus, C(cos. 37), 28
Aurelius Fulvus, T. (cos. ord. 89), 19 Caesernii of Aquileia, 199, 216
Aurelius Fulvus Antoninus, T., see Caesernius Quinctianus, T. (cos.c. 138),
Antoninus Pius comes of H. in Africa, 203 ff, 216; in
Aurelius Victor, Sex., chronicler, 6; on east, 257, 274, 279
Antinous, 247, 248, 249, 255, 289; on Caesernius Statianus, T. (cos. c. 141),
H.'s building, 283 comes of H.in east, 216, 257; levied
Autobulus, son of Plutarch, 185 troops, 274
Avidius Cassius, C. (cos. 166), 257, 348 Caligula, the emperor, 121, 145
Avidius Heliodorus, C , Epicurean, 109, Callidromus, slave, 65
182, 195, 216, 339; ab epistulis, 182, Callistratus, jurist, on iuvenes, 23
216; dismissed, 281; in Egypt, 216, Callistus, slave, 24
240, 257, 348; later Prefect there, 296, Calpurnius Crassus Frugi, C. (cos. 87),
353 banished, 67, 77; killed, 78
375
INDEX
Calpurnius Flaccus, C , at Tarraco, 148, Turbo, 281; Alani, 287; H.'s last
153 illness, 289, 297; H.'s first adoptive
Calpurnius Flaccus, C. (cos. c. 124) , son, 289, 291; death of Servianus, 291
proconsul of Cyprus, 153 f; H.'s second adoptive son, 294; H.'s
Calventius Viator, M., centurion under death, 300; his verdict on H., 300,
Avidius Nigrinus, 86, 89, 212; acting 303, 305, 306; on Panhellenion, 344
commander of H.'s Horse Guards, 89, Catilius Severus, L. {cos.II ord. 120),
212, 216, 231 from Bithynia, 67, 103, 158; his
Calvisius Tullus Ruso, P. (cos.ord. 109), presumed wife, 103; linked to Annii
son-in-law of Domitius Tullus, 55, 63 Veri, 103 f, 295; friend of Pliny, 67,
Cambyses, Persian king, 251 103; governor of Cappadocia-Armenia,
Candidus, at Vindolanda, 138 70, 73, 83; of Syria, 83, 101, 158; cos.
Caninius Celer, ab epistulis of H., 216 f, II, 103, 158 f; City Prefect, dismissed,
281, 292, 355, 357 296
Caninius Rufus, his poem on Dacian Cato, M. Porcius (cos. 196 BC), writings
wars, 56 liked by H., 16, 78, 190; quoted by
Caphisodorus, Epaminondas' lover, 179 H., 78, 97
Capito, freedman, 91 Cato, M. Porcius, the younger, died at
Caracalla, the emperor, 133 Utica, 206
Casperius Aelianus, Guard Prefect, 36, Ceionia Fabia, betrothed to M. Aurelius,
38, 319 290, 295
Cassius Dio, L., from Nicaea, 159; his Ceionius Commodus, L.(L. Aelius
History, 4; may have used Marius Caesar), his stepfather, 87, 198;
Maximus, 4, 15; used Arrian on daughter, 290, 295; son, 295, 355 f;
Parthian War, 68; on Licinius Sura, adopted by H., 3, 87, 289 f, 291,
42; H.'s father, 10; death of Vespasian, 295; sent to Pannonia, 290 f; death
15, 299; poisonings, 19; Domitian, of, 292 ff; his vita in the HA, 4
31; Julius Servianus, 51; men esteemed Celsus, see Publilius Celsus
by Trajan, 67; Trajan's eastern Censorinus, on the phoenix, 245
conquests, 69, 71 f; Antioch Censorius Claudianus, M., centurion,
earthquake, 71; Jewish diaspora revolt, 274
74; death of Trajan, 75 f, 80; H.'s Censorius Niger, C , governed Noricum,
dream, 71', 230; H.'s huntsman, 92; 121
'four consulars' affair, 87, 95; burning Cepheus, King of Mantinea, 180
of tax documents, 97; shows in AD Chabrias, freedman, 357
119, 100; H. at Rome, 102; suicide of Chaeremon, philosopher, 240
Euphrates, 106; H.'s ambition to Charisius, cites H. on grammar, 195
excel, 112, 194; Apollodorus, 112, Cheops, Pharaoh, 246
273; H.'s travels, 113 f; H.'s army Chosroes, Parthian king, 65, 66, 72, 73,
policy, 119; rioting in Egypt, 142; H.'s 74, 78, 153 f., 225; his daughter and
tribute to Plotina, 145; H. and Italica, throne, 72, 154, 220, 225, 347
149; H.'s building at Cyzicus, 162; Cicero, M. Tullius, on Corduban poets,
H.'s literary tastes, 171; a petitioner to 21; on Narbo, 146; Phaselis, 261; his
H., 172; H. at Athens, 182, 263, 265, Verrines, 190, 206; disliked by H., 16,
305; Favorinus, 194; M. Aurelius, 201; 78, 190; Fronto compared with, 203;
Pedanius Fuscus, 202; Pharasmanes, his villa, 300
226; re-founding of Jerusalem, 231; Cilnius Proculus, C. (cos. 100), 45, 48,
H.'s entry to Egypt, 233; H.'s 325
restoring Pompeius' tomb, 235 ffi; Cimon, Athenian statesman, 63, 218,
Alexander's body, 239; Antinous, 247, 261
248, 249, 289, 299; death of Paulina, Claudius, the emperor, 18, 28, 30, 83,
247; Jewish war, 259, 268 f., 272, 274 116, 121, 159, 162, 198, 228
f; H.'s return to Rome, 280; Marcius Claudius Agrippinus, procurator, 105
INDEX
Claudius Atticus Herodes, Ti. Cornelius Latinianus, L. (cos. c. 124),
(cos. c. 132), wealthy Athenian, 63, 89; 101, 328
his son Herodes, 68, 89, 177, 282; Cornelius Minicianus, protege of Pliny,
made a senator by H., 177, 217 f., 53
221, 338; consul, 218, 261, 265 f, Cornelius Nigrinus, M. (cos. 83), 17, 35,
350; his ties with Sparta, 180, 181 318 f.
Claudius Balbillus, Ti., astrologer and Cornelius Palma, A. (cos.II ord. 109),
Prefect of Egypt, 228, 249, 251 friend of Trajan, 38, 88; annexed
Claudius Candidus Julianus, ambassador Arabia, 51, 66, 67, 88; cos. II, 60, 67,
from Stratonicea, 197 103; perhaps with Trajan in east, 67;
Claudius Charax, A. (cos. 147), of enemy of H., 67, 75; under suspicion,
Pergamum, 169 75, 87 f.; allegedly conspired against
Claudius Cyrus, delegate from H., 87 f., 103; killed, 87 f.
Pergamum, 84 Cornelius Priscus, L. (cos. 104?),
Claudius Fronto, M. (cos. 165), 326 proconsul of Asia, 108
Claudius Livianus, Ti., Guard Prefect, Cornelius Pulcher, Cn., friend of
46, 47, 48, 67; friend of H., 48, 58, Plutarch, 178, 292; procurator of
67; his boy favourites, 317 Epirus, 60; 178; visited Epictetus, 60,
Claudius Maximus, iuridicus in 292; Helladarch, 178, 292; archon of
Pannonia, 290 Panhellenion, 266, 292
Claudius Maximus, Ti., cavalryman, Cornelius Pusio, L. (cos. 90), 19
51 Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus, P., fond of
Claudius Paternus Clementianus, acting hunting, 25; model for H., 117, 118
governor of Judaea, 79, 120 f; Cornelius Scipio African us, P., Spanish
governed Noricum, 120 f. campaigns of, 21; based at Tarraco,
Claudius Piso Diophantus, Ti., of 147; founded Italica, 12, 147; model
Ephesus, 350 f. for H., 147
Claudius Quartinus, Ti. (cos. c. 134), Cornelius Tacitus, see Tacitus
iuridicus in Spain, 149, 150; took Cornutus Tertullus, C. Julius (cos. 100),
troops east, 153 governed Pontus-Bithynia, 66
Claudius Severus, C. (cos. 112), 66 f. Cossutius, architect, 183
Claudius Socrates, Ti., of Stratonicea, Cotys II, ruler of Crimea, 156, 160, 161,
166 264
Claudius Timocrates, at Delphi, 187 Crassus, M. Licinius (cos. II55 BC), 72
Cleisthenes, Athenian reformer, 254 Crassus Frugi, see Calpurnius Crassus
Cleopatra, of Ancyra, 83 Cuspius Camerinus, L. (cos. 125), from
Clodius Sura, P., of Brixia, 53, 198 f. Pergamum, 167
Clodius Turrinus, Spanish orator, 23 Cuspius Pactumeius Rufinus, L. (cos. ord.
Cluvius Maximus Paullinus, P. (cos.c. 142), from Pergamum, 167
143), legate to H., 213 Cutia Prisca, 192
Cocceius Nerva, M., see Nerva
Coelius Antipater, writer favoured by Darius, Persian king, 72
H., 16, 78 Dasumia Polla , wife of Domitius Tullus,
Coelius Rufus, L. (cos. 119), governed 55; perhaps married Catilius Severus,
Lower Germany, 342 67, 103
Constantine I, the Great, 119, 303 Dasumii of Corduba, 55, 67, 102, 124;
Corbulo, Cn. Domitius, recalled from at Italica, 328
across Rhine, 116 f.; his canal, 117, 'Dasumius the Testator', non-existent,
121 55
Corellius Rufus, Q. (cos. 78), 35 Dasumius Hadrianus, L., presumed
Cornelius Balbus, L. (cos. 40 BC), kinsman of H., 28
Caesar's agent, 12 Dasumius Rusticus, P. (cos. ord. 119),
Cornelius Fuscus, Guard Prefect, 17 102, 124
377
INDEX
Decebalus, King of Dacians, 46, 47,49, Dracon, Athenian lawgiver, 177
50, 51, 52, 65 Drusilla, Jewish princess, 228
Decii, Roman heroes, 249 Drusus, Augustus' stepson, 121
Decrianus, architect, 112 Dynamis, Queen, 156
Dio, see Cassius Dio
Dio of Prusa (Chrysostom), his building Earinus, eunuch, 28
at Prusa, 159; on Greeks of Olbia, 61; Eggius Ambibulus, C. {cos. ord. 126), of
with Danube army, 33; his speeches, Aeclanum, 191; consul, 195
4, 46; on the Rhodians, 173; with Eleazar, Jewish priest, 270, 275
Trajan, 56; teacher of Favorinus, 194, Ennius, Q., poet, liked by H., 16, 78,
rebuked Tarsians, 260 300, 301, 356
Diodorus Siculus, on Dionysius I, 133 Epaminondas, memory honoured by
Dionysius I, tyrant of Syracuse, 133, 356 H., 179, 237
Dionysius of Alexandria, 240 Epaphroditus, imperial freedman, 58
Dionysius (T. Claudius Flavianus) of Epictetus, philosopher, 291; from
Miletus, 216 f., 222; member of Hierapolis, 223; admired by H., 4, 60,
Mouseion, 240 107, 109, 195; settled at Nicopolis,
Dionysius 'the Periegete', 240; his poem, 58 ff.; H. probably visited him, 60 ff,
4, 252 £, 349 81, 187 f; Arrian's Discourses of, 60 ff.
Diotimus, freedman, 357 Epicurus, philosopher, 25, 109
Domitia Lucilla, the elder, 55 Epiphanius, on H.'s last journey, 235
Domitia Lucilla, the younger, mother of Erastus, ship's captain, 172, 221
Marcus Aurelius, 55; her father-in-law, Erucius Clarus, Sex. {cos. II ord. 146), 73
55, 146; wealthy, 111 Eucrates, in Lucian, 244
Domitia Paulina, H.'s mother, 10, 23, Eudoxus, mathematician, 244
149, 299, 308, 309 Eumenes II, King of Pergamum, 166
Domitia Paulina, H.'s sister, married to Euphrates, philosopher, 106 f, 357
Julius Servianus, 19, 20, 93, 110, 201, Eurycles, C. Julius, Spartan dynast, 180,
308, 309, 350; her death, 247, 255, 182, 218
257 Eusebius of Caesarea, on H.'s Christian
Domitia Sancta, at Attalia, 350 policy, 127; on Jewish revolt, 271 f,
Domitian, the emperor, 4, 5, 16, 39, 66, 275, 276
100, 108, 128, 144, 229; accession, Eutropius, chronicler,6; on conquest of
15; 'Germanicus', 15; northern wars, Dacia, 51 f; Parthian War, 69; H.,
17, 18 £, 27, 32, 35, 46, 115, 122; his 328
German limes, 115, 116; triumphs, 19,
40; patron of Greek culture, 17; Fabius Catullinus, Q. {cos. ord. 130),
archon at Athens, 17, 64; building at legate of Numidia, 205, 209, 210 ff;
Rome, 17; Secular Games, 18; purge consul, 213, 252
of Stoics, 28 ff.; further executions Fabius Hadrian us, C , cruel governor,
under, 31; murdered, 33, 35, 36, 58 206
Domitii brothers, made patrician, 13; Fabius Sabinus, equestrian officer, 128
wealthy, 17 Fabricius Priscianus Charmosynus, A., of
Domitii, Republican, 12 Tralles, 222
Domitilla, Flavia, 31 Fabricius Veiento, A., 35
Domitius Afer, Cn. {cos. 39), of Faustina, wife of Antoninus Pius, 295
Nemausus, 145 f. Favorinus of Aries, sophist, 107, 337; his
Domitius Rogatus, L., ab epistulis, 290 teacher Dio of Prusa, 194; his writings,
Domitius Tullus, Cn. {cos. II98), 45; his 4; Polemo his enemy, 166, 194; at
adoptive father, 146; death and Corinth, 182; his unusual personality,
testament, 54 f.; son-in-law, 55, 63; 193 f.; quarreled with H., 194 f;
graddaughter, 146; widow, 55, 67, supposedly exiled, 194, 353 f., 357, cf.
103 281
378
INDEX
Fenestella, writer, 23 Gordian III, the emperor, 154
Festus, chronicler, 6; on Parthian War, Gracchus, C , law of, 119
69 Grattius, poet, 23
Flavianus, friend of Plutarch's family,
185 HADRIAN, passim
Flavius Bassus, lictor, 262 Hamilcar Barca, 10
Flavius Cerialis, garrison commander at Hannibal, 10, 21, 147
Vindolanda, 137, 332 Haterius Nepos, T., the elder, took
Flavius Clemens, T. (cos. ord. 95), 31 census of British tribe, 130, 331;
Flavius Genialis, officer at Vindolanda, procurator of Greater Armenia, 70, 79,
331 100; his rapid promotion, 100 f.;
Flavius Potamo, T., of Ephesus, 172 Prefect of Egypt, 100 f., 105, 142, 173
Flavius Titianus, T., Prefect of Egypt, Haterius Nepos, T. (cos. 134), the
221, 235, 250 younger, with Hadrian in AD 118, 79,
Florus, Annaeus, writer, his life, 144; 95; favoured by H., 100, 231, 296;
lived at Tarraco, 144, 147; exchange of governed Arabia, 231, 280; Upper
poems with H., 5, 85, 123, 134, 143, Pannonia, 296
193; on Augustus in Spain, 144; on Heliodorus, see Avidius Heliodorus
Cyzicus, 162; on Trajan, 144 Helvidius Priscus, C , Stoic senator, 28
Fronto, M. Cornelius (cos. 142), the Helvidius (Priscus), the younger, 28, 29,
orator, 201, 314; from Cirta, 203; his 35, 95
letters, 5; on H.'s 'abandonment' of Hephaestio of Thebes , compiled
Dacia, 85; soldiers killed by Britons, horoscopes, 5, 355
123, 268, 352; and by Jews, 268, 352; Herculanus, see Julius Eurycles
H.'s army policy, 211, 303; his view of Herculanus
H., 303; on H.'s appetite, 317; Hermes, slave , 24
Gellius' tales about, 194, 195 Herennius Faustus, M., visited Colossus,
Funisulanus Vettonianus, L. (cos. 78), 17 251 f.
Fuscus, see Pedanius Fuscus Herennius Senecio, 28, 95
Herennius Severus, Philo's patron, 227
Gaius Caesar, son of Augustus, 296 Hermogenes, H.'s doctor, 297
Galba, the emperor, 13, 21 Herod Agrippa I, Jewish king, 228
Galen, the doctor, 337; on Hadrian, 5, Herodes Atticus (Ti. Claudius Atticus
167 Herodes) (cos. ord. 143), 4; his father,
Gallus, helped H., 42 63, 89, 177; teacher Secundus, 182;
Gavii of Ephesus, 172 spoke before H. near Danube, 89,
Gavius Balbus, P., equestrian official, 172 177, 338; H.'s quaestor, 177, 188,
Gavius Bassus, M., prefect of fleet, 172 217; archon at Athens, 217; friend of
Gavius Maximus, M., governed Favorinus, 194; in Asia, 282; archon
Tingitana, 205, 261, 296; Guard of Panhellenion, 292
Prefect, 172, 205, 296 Herodotus, on Heliopolis, 244; drowning
Gavius Silo, Spanish orator, 23 in Nile, 248
Gellius, Aulus, his Attic Nights, 4; on Hipparchus, wealthy Athenian, 63
Favorinus, 194, 195; on Fronto, 194, Homer, 220, 237; disliked by H., 171,
195; quotes H. on Italica, 206 187
Gemellus, NCO of British army, 128 Horace, on Cappadocian king, 224; not
Geminius Sabinus, Q., commandant of liked by H., 16
castra peregrina, 33 Hosidius Geta, M., with Hadrian AD
Germana, H.'s wet-nurse, 10 117-18, 79, 95
Germanicus Caesar, adopted by Tiberius,
296; recalled from Germany, 226; at Ialud, ruler of Osrhoene, 154
Athens, 64; at Claros, 171; in Egypt, Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, 71, 324
243 Isaeus, sophist, 46, 216
379
INDEX
Ismenodora, wealthy widow, 185 from Sardes, 168; his library at
Ephesus, 172
Jerome , on H.'s restoration of Julius Eurycles Herculanus, C , Spartan
Alexandria, 239; on Jerusalem, 276 notable, 63; essay dedicated to by
John Malalas, see Malalas Plutarch, 63, 180; entered senate, 180,
John Xiphilinus, see Xiphilinus 221; his career, 218, 322, 339, 344;
Jonathan b. Be'ayan, Jewish officer, 270, commanded Syrian legion, 218, 226;
271 linked with Pompeius Falco, 180;
Josephus, Flavius, on Maccabees, 229 benefaction at Corinth, 182
Joshua b. Galgula, Jewish officer, 271 Julius Frontinus, Sex. (cos. Ill ord. 100),
Joshua b. Hanania, Rabbi, 234 35, 37, 42, 45, 133
Judah b. Manasseh, Jewish officer, 270 Julius Genitor, friend of Pliny, 56
Jugurtha, 117, 207 Julius Major, Sex. (cos. c. 126), from
Julia Balbilla, her family, 62 f.; father, Nysa, 169, 222; legate of Numidia,
228; grandfathers, 228, 240, 249, 251; 169, 205, 222; governed Lower
friend of Sabina, 6, 63, 177, 217; her Moesia, 223, 279, 296; and Syria, 296
poems, 6; in Egypt, 240, 246, 250 ff. Julius Marinus, L.(cos. 93?), 33
Julia Paulina, H.'s niece, 19, 308, 309; Julius Maximus Manlianus, T. (cos. 112),
legatee of Domitius Tullus, 55; 54,67
married to Pedanius Fuscus, 55, 85, Julius Pardalas, of Sardes, 168, 169
94, 146, 183, 201; perhaps in Spain Julius Proculus, in Spain, 334
with H., 146 Julius Proculus, C. (cos. 109), governed
Julian, the emperor, on H., 306 Transpadana, 200; designated cos. II,
Julianus, ruler of Apsilae, 69, 225 334, 353
Julius Agricola, Cn. (cos. 76?), Tacitus' Julius Quadratus, A. (cos. 94, 7/ ord.
biography of, 5, 29, 36, 37, 40; made 105), of Pergamum, 14, 63; his career,
patrician, 13; his career, 14; as military 14; cos.I, 30, 60, 166, 338; friend of
tribune, 32; as tribune of the plebs, Trajan, 30, 60, 166; governor of Syria,
48; governor of Aquitania, 53; choice cos. II ord., proconsul of Asia, 60;
of fort-sites, 119; his great victory in favoured H., 30, 45, 60
Britain, 15 f., 32, 40, 128; conquests Julius Quadratus Bassus, C. (cos. 105),
abandoned, 17 f., 128 ff.; 'prophesied from Pergamum, 63, 160, 169, 172;
Trajan's accession', 37; death of, 28; his son, 279; favoured by Trajan, 160,
his political credo, 29 166; his career, 169; in First Dacian
Julius Agrippa, C , senator of Jewish Wars, 48, 66; governed Judaea, 66;
origin, 347 Cappadocia, 66; Syria, 66, 75; Dacia,
Julius Alexander Berenicianus, C. (cos. 75, 80 f., 83, 84, 86; died there, 80 f.,
116), of Jewish origin, 230 86; buried at Pergamum, 84, 167
Julius Alexander Julianus, Ti. (cos. 117), Julius Sabinus , governor of Dacia, 51
of Jewish origin, 230; in Parthian War, Julius Servianus, L. (Ser.) (cos.Ill ord.
73 134), H.'s brother-in-law 3, 19, 20,
Julius Antiochus Epiphanes Philopappus, 93, 110, 201, 247, 308, 309; his wife's
C. (cos. 109), his ancestors, 64; death, 247; his kinsman Julius Ursus,
grandfather, 62, 228; sister, 63, 177, 37; daughter, son-in-law, 55, 94, 201
217; resident of Athens, 57, 62 f, 64, f.; grandson, 280, 291; cos. I, 19;
177; linked with Julius Eurycles legate of Upper Germany, 37 ff.; of
Herculanus, 180; his monument, 217 Pannonia, 40; in First Dacian War, 46
Julius Bassus, delinquent proconsul, 49 f.; cos. II ord., 47, 51, 60; favoured by
Julius Caesar, C , the Dictator, 5, 12, 13, Trajan, 37,39, 46; potential successor
46, 96, 156, 164, 184, 206, 207, 236; to, 51, 78; friend of Domitius Tullus,
and Spain, 22, 149 55; outdone by Annius Verus, 195 f.;
Julius Candidus, Ti. (cos. II ord. 105), 60 cos. Ill, 104, 280, 334; forced to
Julius Celsus Polemaeanus, Ti. (cos. 92), suicide, 3, 291 f, 297
380
INDEX
Julius Severus, C. (cos. c. 138), of Ancyra, Licinius Sura, L.(cos.III ord. 107), his
his relatives, 261; made senator by H., ancestor, 146; and Martial, 20, 27,
221; legate in Asia, 221, 223; 146; close to Trajan, 27, 37, 42, 54;
commanded Syrian legion, 226, 268 wrote his speeches, 54; in First Dacian
Julius Severus, Sex. (cos. 127), governed War, 46 f.; cos. II ord, 47,51; told H.
Upper Dacia, 101, 202, 273; Lower of adoption, 54, 61; death of, 54;
Moesia, 202, 257, 273; Britain, 202, proteges of, 54, 89, 146
257, 273; suppressed Jewish revolt, Livy, 5, 206
273 ff.; governed Syria, 296 Lollianus Avitus, L. (cos. ord. 114),
Julius Ursus, L. (cos. 7/7100), 37, 47 proconsul of Asia, perhaps with H. in
Julius Vestinus, L., archiereus in Egypt, Egypt, 246, 345
42; a bibliothecis, a studiis, 142; ab Lollius Paullinus cet., M. (cos. 94, II ord.
epistulis, 142 £, 205 125), consul 30, 338; City Prefect,
Julius Vindex, C , rebel against Nero, 33, 196, 338
36 Lollius Urbicus, Q. (cos. c. 135), from N.
Juncus, see Aemilius Juncus Africa, 208; in Judaea, 274, 296;
Junius Avitus, protege of Pliny, 38, 40 governed Lower Germany, 296
Junius Gallio, rhetor, 23 Lucan, poet, 22 f.
Junius Homullus, M. (cos. 102), governor Lucian, satirist, on Pancrates, 244, 245
of Cappadocia, 66, 69 Lucius Caesar, son of Augustus, 296
Junius Mauricus, Stoic senator, 28, 95 Lucius Verus, the emperor, 3, 134, 295,
Junius Rufinus, proconsul of Macedonia, 355 f.; his vita in the HA, 4
260 f. Lusius Quietus (cos. 117), Moorish
Junius Rusticus, Q. Arulenus, Stoic chieftain, in Dacian War, 47, 67; in
senator, 28, 29, 95 Parthian War, 67, 70, 72, 73, 74;
Justin, Christian writer, 127, 271 governor of Judaea, 75, 78 f., 230;
Juvenal, poet, wrote under H., 5; hoped dismissed by H., 78 f., 87, 120 f., 233;
for his patronage, 193; on Egypt, 235, allegedly conspired against H., 87 f.,
242; Greeks, 17; games, 100; his farm 165; killed, 87 f., 150, 230, 336
atTibur, 193 Lycurgus, Spartan lawgiver, 181
Juventius Celsus, P. (cos. 114), jurist, 50, Lydus, Johannes, 321
220; proconsul of Asia, 220 f.
Maccabees, rising of, 228 f., 346
Kanishka, Kushan ruler, 225 Macedo, see Statius Macedo
Maecenas, C , patron of poets, 193
Laberia Crispina, wife of Bruttius Maenius Agrippa, M., equestrian officer,
Praesens, 197 123, 128, 138, 198
Laberius, poet, 195 Malalas, John, on Parthian war, 68, 71,
Laberius Maximus, M'. (cos. II ord. 103), 323, 324; on H.'s eyes, 314; H.'s
47, 60, 65; banished, 67, 77, 103; building at Antioch, 153; on H. and
spared, 78 the Colossus of Rhodes, 173
Laco, C. Julius, Spartan dynast, 180 Malassas, ruler of Lazi, 225
Lappius Maximus, A. Bucius (cos. 7795), Males Agrippa, of Palmyra, 231
18 Mancia, law of, 209
Larcius Priscus, A.(cos. 110), 36 Manilius Vopiscus, P., at Tibur, 192
Latinius Alexander, of Ancyra, 83 Manlius Carbo, P., Arval, 108
Licinianus, of Bilbilis, 146 Mannus, Parthian vassal, 71
Licinius Mucianus, C. (cos. Ill 72), 162 Mannus, ruler of Osrhoene, 153, 225
Licinius Nepos, praetor, 49 Marcellus, see Neratius Marcellus
Licinius Pompenna cet., M., of Marcia, wife of elder Trajan, 13, 56, 308,
Heliopolis, 230 309
Licinius Silvanus Granianus, Q. (cos. Marcia Furnilla, wife of Titus, 13
106), proconsul of Asia, 125 ff., 183 Marciana, see Ulpia Marciana
381
INDEX
Marcius Turbo, Q., his adopted son, Mauricus, see Junius Mauricus
290; centurion, 32, 54; friend of H., Maximus, defeated in Mesopotamia, 73
54, 67; praef. vehiculorum, 54; Prefect, Maximus, see Julius, Marius, Valerius
32; procurator of gladiatorial school, Maximus
58; commanded Misenum fleet, 65, Mebarsapes, ruler of Adiabene, 71, 72
74, 91; suppressed Jews in Egypt, 74, Menemachus of Sardes, Plutarch's essay
80, 91, 142; his Mauretanian mission, to, 168 £
80, 84, 86, 91, 150; special command Mesomedes, H.'s freedman, 240, 252
in Danube area, 86, 87, 90 £, 91 f., Messius Rusticus, see Aemilius Papus
101, 104; freedman, 91; Guard Metilius Secundus, P. {cos. c. 123), legate
Prefect, 91 £, 96, 101, 114, 125, 139, of Numidia, 151, 152
141, 143, 173, 183, 214, 281, 296; Metellus Numidicus, Q. Caecilius
lost favour with H., 296 {cos. 109 BC), model for H., 117, 118
Marcus of Byzantium, sophist, 178 Mettius Cams, informer, 28
Marcus Aurelius, the emperor, 208; his Mettius Rufus, Prefect of Egypt, 251
family, 340; grandfather, 3, 114; Mettius Modestus, legate of
mother, 55; uncle, 295; birth of, 114; Lycia-Pamphylia, 223, 251, 261
favoured by H., 3, 196, 201, 290, 295 Mettius Modestus, C. {cos. 103) legate of
£, 303; assumed toga virilis, 20; Lycia-Pamphylia, 251; proconsul of
betrothed, 290, 295; adopted by Asia, 108
Antoninus, 295 f.; his Italician iuridici, Milo, slave, 24
200; his vita in the HA, 4 Miltiades, Athenian general, 63, 218
Marius, C. {cos. VII86), 117, 207 Mindius, L. presumed husband of
Marius Maximus, L. {cos. II ord. 223), 7; Matidia, 16, 308, 309
lives of Nerva and Trajan, 37; on Minicius Fundanus, C. {cos. 107),
Hadrian, 3, 15, 16 f, 25, 42, 47, 80, philhellene, 57; friend of Plutarch, 62;
91, 97, 98, 103, 104, 117, 133, 139, proconsul of Asia, 127
144 £, 148, 158, 226, 227, 248, 297, Minicius Natalis, L. {cos. 106), from
299, 300, 302, 306, 313, 340; his Barcino, 54; had property at Tibur,
work lost, 3 £, 6, 248; perhaps used 192; governed Numidia, 209; Upper
by Dio, 4; perhaps echoed Tacitus, 80 Pannonia, 67, 89, 101, 192, 327;
Marius Priscus {cos. c. 84), delinquent proconsul of Africa, 115, 192
proconsul, 45 Minicius Natalis, L. {cos. 139), his three
Marius Vitalis, L., in H.'s retinue, 185 tribunates, 319; H.'s quaestor, 115,
Martial, poet, from Bilbilis in Spain, 23; 192, 216; won at Olympics, 216, 343
his friends, Arcanus, 146; Licinianus, Mithridates the Great, 156
146; Voconius Victor, 193; on Mithridates of Mesene, 225
Domitian and his times, 4, 27 £; Mithridates, Parthian prince, 287, 346
Licinius Sura, 20, 27; life in Spain, Moses, 234
24 £; Tarraco, 146 Mummius, L. {cos. 146 BC), destroyed
Marullinus, ancestor of H., 12 Corinth, 24, 182
Masabala, Jewish officer, 270, 271 Mummius Sisenna, P. {cos. ord. 133),
Mastor, H.'s huntsman, 92, 297 governed Britain, 273
Matidia, Salonia, Sabina's mother, 16, Musonius Rufus, C , Stoic, 58
132, 308, 310; H. devoted to, 42, 93,
107; made Augusta, 64, 107; in east Neratii, of Saepinum, 191
with Trajan, 65, 71, 76; returned to Neratius Marcellus, L. {cos.II ord. 129),
Rome, 79 £; death of, 107; deified, governor of Britain, 51, 53, 115, 130;
107, 110, 111, 113; honoured at possible comes of H., 115, 125, 134;
Antinoopolis, 254 £ cos. II, 220; death of, 281, 292
Matidia, the younger, 110, 308, 309 Neratius Pansa, M. {cos. c. 74), 320
Matidius Patruinus, C. Salonius, 308, Neratius Priscus, L. {cos. 97), 320; the
310 jurist, 45, 220; governed Lower
382
INDEX
Germany, 45, 115; and Pannonia, H. at Mantinea, 179; has nothing on
50 f.; potential successor to Trajan, H. at Olympia, 181; on Scillus, 181 f.;
50 f., 78; possible comes of H., 115; H. at Corinth, 182; Thespiae, 184;
head of Proculian school of jurists, Trophonius, 186; H. at Abae and
50 f. Hyampolis, 186; H.'s buildings at
Nero, the emperor, 13, 14, 19, 20, 21, Athens, 219, 263, 264 £, 276, 305;
22, 28, 34, 65, 69, 88, 108, 111, 160, Memnon, 250; Jewish war, 276;
178 f., 186, 200, 208, 228, 249, 269; Lupiae, 340
false Nero, 18 f. Pedanius Fuscus, H.'s grand-nephew, 3,
Nerva, M. Cocceius, the emperor, 8, 9, 202, 291, 308, 309; perhaps with H.
39, 63, 67, 95, 132, 193, 197, 229; in Greece, 215; and in east, 215, 262,
consulships, 19; became emperor, 33 280; put to death, 3, 291; his
f; his reign, 35 ff; adopted Trajan, horoscope, 5, 291
36, 65, 77; death of, 38, 99, 283, 323; Pedanius Fuscus Salinator, Qn.{cos. ord.
Marius Maximus' life of, 38 118), 308, 309; praised by Pliny, 55,
Nicomedes, freedman, 290 92; married to H.'s niece, 55, 85, 146,
Niger, Pescennius, the emperor, 227 183, 201 f; consul, 85, 92, 215;
Nigrinus, see Avidius Nigrinus perhaps in Spain with H., 146;
Norbanus, 18 perhaps at Athens, 183, 201; death,
Numa Pompilius, King of Rome, H. 201 f., 215
compared self with, 42, 111 Pedanius Secundus, L. {cos. 43), of
Numenius, rhetor, 240, 252 Barcino, 13
Pedo Vergilianus, M. {cos. ord. 115),
Octavius, letter from, 138 killed in earthquake, 71, 324
Oppius Sabinus, C. {cos. ord. 84), 17 Peducaeus Priscinus, M. {cos. ord. 110),
Orion, wrote on H., 82, 325 proconsul of Asia, 170
Orosius, historian, on Janus, 154 Pericles, Athenian statesman 168 f;
Otho, the emperor, 34 imitated by H., 2, 218, 219 f., 306
Perseus, legendary founder, 220
Pachrates, see Pancrates Petronius Mamertinus, M., Guard
Pacorus, Parthian king, 65, 68 Prefect, 296
Pactumeius Clemens, P. {cos. 138), his Petronius Priscus, T., H.'s a libellis,
special mission in Greece, 219, 224 172
Pactumeius Fronto, Q. Aurelius {cos. 80), Phaedimus, M. Ulpius, Trajan's butler,
of Cirta, 203 80
Paion of Side, poet, 223; in Egypt, 240, Pharasmanes, ruler of Iberians, 225 f,
251,261 264, 287
Palma, see Cornelius Phidias, sculptor, 181, 264, 354
Pancrates, poet and prophet, 240; his Philip II, King of Macedon, allegedly
lion-hunt poem, 241, 244 f., 252; initiated at Eleusis, 175 ff.; destroyed
displayed magic to H., 244, 249, 302 Hyampolis, 186
Pardalas of Sardes, 169 Philo, ofByblus, 227, 228
Parthamasiris, Parthian prince, 65, 69 f. Philocyrius, ship's captain, 172, 221
Parthamaspates, Parthian prince, 73, 78, Philopappus, see Julius Antiochus
153 f. Epiphanes Philopappus
Paul, apostle, at Ephesus, 172; on Philostratus, his Lives of the Sophists, 4;
circumcision, 229 on Dio of Prusa, 33; Euphrates, 106;
Paulus, of Tyre, 227; anti-semite, 228, Favorinus, 194; H.'s Antium palace,
229 201; Heliodorus and rivals, 216 f.;
Pausanias, his Guide to Greece, 5; on Herodes, 282, 292; Megara, 177 £;
H.'s benefactions, 177; H. at Megara, Mouseion, 240; Polemo, 160, 265 £,
178, 189; H. at shrine of Hera, 178; 282, 344
H. and boys' race at Nemea, 179; Philotera, of Tebtunis, 108
383
INDEX
Phlegon of Tralles, H.'s freedman, his 62, 127; Septicius Clarus, 96, 156;
home, 222; with H. during Parthian proteges, Junius Avitus, 38, 40;
War, 75; probably with H. in Egypt, Suetonius, 55, 96, 156; praised
240; his writings, 4, 299, 356; on Pedanius Fuscus, 55, 92, 309; and
change of sex, 75, 356; Hadria, 133, Ummidius Quadratus, 92; Tacitus'
332, 356; Africa, 151 f; places in Asia Histories, 56; H. not mentioned by,
Minor, 154; 'Tervetia', 191 f.; Cotys, 53; hunted, 25; death of, 66
156; may have transmitted letters of Plotina, Pompeia, Trajan's empress, 93,
H., 110 308, 309; favoured H., 1, 16, 42, 67
Photis, character in novel, 23 f, 75, 145, 289; her entry to Palace,
Pisistratus, Athenian tyrant, inaugurated 40; in east with Trajan, 65, 71, 75 f;
Temple of Olympian Zeus, 2, 64, 183; managed H.'s 'adoption', 77; con-
brought water to Athens, 184 ducted Trajan's remains to Rome, 79
Piso, Cn. Calpurnius (cos. ord. 7 BC), at f.; not prominent, 107; supporter of
Athens, 64 Epicureans, 109, 182; her letter to H.
Piso, L. Calpurnius (cos.ord. 15 BC), at 109 f, 182; death of, 144, 145, 334;
Milan, 200 deified, 191
Plancia Magna, of Perge, 261 Plutarch, from Chaeronea, 62; his son,
Plancius Varus, C. Julius, governed 62, 180; much at Delphi, 62, 187;
Cilicia, 261 honoured H. there, 169, 187; given
Plato, in Egypt, 244; admired official post by H., 169, 187; his
Antimachus, 171; his dialogues recited, Mor alia, 4; dedicated Table Talk to
15 Sosius Senecio, 62; dedicated essays, to
Plato rius Nepos, A. (cos. 119), friend of Avidius Quietus, 88; to Cornelius
H., 24, 29, 58, 67, 84, 115, 121, 124, Pulcher, 178, 292; to Herculanus, 63,
134, 202; lost H.'s favour 281; Illvir 180; to Menemachus, 168 f; on
capitalis, 29; in Parthian War, 67, 84; Antimachus, 171; On Love, 185; on
governed Thrace, 84, 85, 102; Lower The Oracles at Delphi, 187; his Parallel
Germany, 102, 115, 121, 124; Britain, Lives, 62; on Sertorius, 25; welcomed
124, 125, 127, 133, 134, 173, 202; at Rome, 15; Roman friends, 62, 88;
brickworks on his land, 111 death of, 169
Pliny, the Elder, on Germany, 40; Polemo, King of Pontus, 160; his
Caligula, 121; Cyzicus, 162; Nero's daughter, 162; descendant, 169
confiscations, 208 Polemo, Antonius, from Laodicea, 159,
Pliny, the Younger, Xvir, 29; military 223; his personality, 159 ff; family,
tribune, 106; sought priesthood, 45; 159 f, 162, 169, 222; with H. in east,
his mission in Pontus-Bithynia, 57, 65, 159, 160 f, 164 ff; gained favours for
66, 156 f, 157 f, 159, 162; prose- Smyrna, 169, 170; his pupils, 160;
cuted Baebius Massa, 28; advocate, 29 member of Mouseion, 240; on
f; attacked Publicius Certus, 35, 48; physiognomy, 4, 7, 159, 164 ff, 168,
prosecuted Caecilius Classicus, 48 f; 170, 174, 326; hostile to Favorinus,
and Marius Priscus, 45; defended 166, 194; on Hadrian, 166, 314;
Julius Bassus, 49; and Varenus Rufus, speech at Olympieion, 265 f.
159; on Trajan and his times, 4, 5, 25, Polyaenus, Claudius, of Prusa, 159
27, 46, 51, 53, 54 ff, 88, 106 f, 201, Polyaenus, friend of H., 159; death of,
227; his Panegyric on Trajan, 45 f; on 281, 292
Trajan's elevation, 37; prayed for an Polybius, on younger Scipio, 25
heir for Trajan, 50; his letters to Pompeius Falco, Q. (cos. 108), from
Trajan, 39, 45, 65, 84, 127, 156 f, Sicily, 133, 189, 332; his wife, 58, 84;
157 f, 159, 162; his friends, Baebius her death, 162; their son, 162;
Macer, 78; Catilius Severus, 67, 103; presumed friend of H., 48, 58, 67, 84,
Julius Servianus, 38, 39, 53, 55, 309; 162; governed Judaea, 53, 84; curator
Licinius Sura, 53; Minicius Fundanus, of Via Traiana, 58, 190; governed
INDEX
Lower Moesia, 67, 84, 90, 92, 93; Romulus, slave, 24
Britain, 90, 101, 122, 123, 124, 127, Rosianus Geminus, T. Prifernius Paetus
133, 138, 141; proconsul of Asia, 162, (cos.c. 125 ), legate of Cappadocia,
170, 208; linked with Julius Eurycles 224, 226, 257
Herculanus, 180 Rusticus, his estate, 220
Pompeius Longinus, Cn. (cos. 90), 50 Rusticus, see Junius Rusticus
Pompeius Magnus, Cn. (cos. Ill 52 BC), Rutilius Lupus, M., Prefect of Egypt, 67,
his tomb restored by H., 235 ff. 72, 74, 110; replaced, 79; brickworks
Pompeius Magnus, Cn., the younger, 22 on his land, 110
Pomponius Bassus, L. (cos. 118), 93
Pomponius Bassus, T. (cos. 94), legate in Sabina, (Vibia), Hadrian's wife, 2, 308,
Asia, 14 310; parents, 16; father, 45; mother,
Pontius Laelianus, M. (cos. 144), tribune 64, 107, 110, 254 £; grandmother, 64,
ofVIth legion, 124, 134; comes of 107; married to H., 42; with H. at
Lucius Verus, 134 Athens, 64; and in AD 117, 80;
Pontius Sabinus, T., took troops to perhaps in AD 118, 85; became
Britain, 123, 124 Augusta, 107; with H. AD 121-2, 115,
Popillius Theotimus, Epicurean, 109 125, 139; probably with H. in east in
Porcius Latro, Spanish rhetor, 23; keen AD 124, 170; and from AD 129, 217;
on hunting, 25 at Palmyra, 231; on Alexandrian coins,
Priscian, grammarian, 321 238, 239; her friend Balbilla, 6, 63,
Priscus, friend of Martial, 24 177, 217, 228, 240, 250 ff.; honoured
Propertius, Sex., on Cyzicus, 162 in Greece, 178; at Antinoopolis, 254
Protogenes of Tarsus, in Plutarch, 185 f.; portraits of, 7, 8; her bad relations
Ptolemy I, king of Egypt, made tomb for with H., 139, 294; death of, 293 f.
Alexander, 239; and Sarapis cult, 245 Sabinius Barbarus, T. (cos. 118), 93
Ptolemy II, king of Egypt, founded 'Salan', H.'s 'cousin', 183, 201 f.
Mouseion, 240; settled colonists round Sallust, 197
L. Moeris, 246 Publicius Certus, 35, Salome, Jewish refugee, 272
48 Salvius Julian us, P. (cos.ord. 148), the
Publicius Marcellus, C. (cos. 120), jurist, from Hadrumetum, 208;
governed Lower Germany, 199; and possible comes of H., 220, 257;
Syria, 199, 226, 268, 275 quaestor, codified edict, 208, 257,
Publilius Celsus, L. (cos.IIord.\\5), 283, 305
esteemed by Trajan, 67, 103; enemy of Sanchuniathon, alleged Phoenician
H., 67, 75; under suspicion, 75, 87 f.; writer, 227
allegedly conspired against H., killed, Sappho, poetess, 251
87 £, 103 Scipio, see Cornelius Scipio
Pythodorus of Tralles, 222 Scipio brothers, founded Tarraco, 147
Secundus, 'silent' philosopher, 182 £,
Quadratus, Christian apologist, 183 201 £
Quadratus, see Julius, Ummidius Sejanus, L. Aelius, Guard Prefect, 330
Quintilian, professor of rhetoric, from Seneca, L. Annaeus, the elder, 13, 22 £
Spain, 23, 149; his wife and sons, 19 Seneca, L. Annaeus, the younger, 13, 22
f.; retired, 26, 27; on Antimachus, £; hunted, 25
171; time of Domitian, 4; learning Septicius Clarus, C , friend of Pliny, 96,
Greek, 15; psaltery, 17; schools, 16 156; Guard Prefect, 5, 96, 101, 114 £,
330; patron of Suetonius, 5, 96, 115,
Rammius Martialis, Q., Prefect of Egypt, 120, 125; dismissed, 5, 138 £, 143,
79, 82 £, 101, 105 f., 143; perhaps 281
Guard Prefect, 143, 146, 333 Septimius Severus, the emperor, 133, 227
Rhezmagas, ruler of Abasci, 225 Sertorius, Q., hunted in Spain, 25
Romulus, founder of Rome, 111, 144 Sertorius Severus, 30
385
INDEX
Sextilius Ena, Corduban poet, 22 Sura, see Licinius Sura
Shim'on Bar-Kokhba, Jewish leader, 2, 6, Synesius of Cyrene, 306 £
269 ff., 275, 276, 346
Silius Italicus, poet, 27 Tacitus, Cornelius, praetor and XVvir,
Socrates, on heavenly Aphrodite, 185 18; away AD 90-3, 27, 28 £; consul,
Solomon, Tomb of, 268 36; orator, 36, 201; proconsul of Asia,
Solon, Athenian statesman, 177 64, 171; his writings, 5, 9, 28 £; his
Sosia Polla, wife of Pompeius Falco, 58, Agricola, 5, 29, 36, 37, 40, 53, 119,
84; died, 162 128 ff.; on trials in AD 93, 28 £, 95;
Sosius Senecio, Q. (cos.II ord. 107), his Germany, 40, 115, 121, 122; his
friend of Trajan, 38, 67', 88; son-in- Histories, 46, 56, 64, 80, 130, 229;
law of Frontinus, 38; his daughter, 58, Annals, 64, 78, 88, 96, 121, 171, 193,
84; friend of H., 48, 57, 58, 67; and 200, 226, 243, 313; possible veiled
of Plutarch, 62; legatee of Domitius allusions to H. in, 5, 9, 78, 83, 88, 95,
Tullus, 55; cos. II, 60 104, 108, 116 f., 173, 313 £, 326,
Spadagas, ruler of Sanigae, 225 330; hunted, 25
Stachemphylax, ruler of Zilchi, 225 Terentia, perhaps with H. in east, 246,
Statius, poet, 15; on time of Domitian, 345; wrote poem on Great Pyramid,
4; on Earinus, 28; banquet in Palace, 246
30 £; on Tibur villa of Manilius Terentius Gentianus, D. (cos. 116),
Vopiscus, 192 governed Macedonia, 106; lost H.'s
Statius Macedo, L., of Aquileia, Guard favour, 281; mourned by sister, 246
tribune, 216, 223, 243; prefect of II Terentius Scaurianus, D. (cos. c.
Traiana, 243 104),Trajanic marshal, 16, 106, 246
Statius Priscus, M. (cos. ord. 159), in Terentius Scaurus, Q. , H.'s teacher, 16;
Judaea, 274 rebutted by H., 195
Stephanus, Byzantine geographer, 191 Terpander, poet, 289
Strabo, the geographer, from Amasia, Tertullian, on drowning in Nile, 248 £;
155; on Canopus, 242 £; Memnon, on Athens and Jerusalem, 276 ff.; on
251; Mouseion, 240; Spain, 22; H., 306, 358 £
Tarsus, 260 Tettius Julianus, L. (cos. 83), 18
Strato, of Sardes, homoerotic poet, 169 f. Themistius, on Arrian, 288
Suetonius Tranquillus, C , from Hippo Thestylus, boy favourite, 193
Regius, 203; protege of Pliny, 53, 96, Thrasea Paetus, P. Clodius (cos. 56), 28,
156, 157; offered tribunate in Britain, 88
53; his Lives of Famous Men, 96; on Tiberius, the emperor, 5, 64, 83, 88, 95,
Albucius Silo, 200; On Famous Whores, 104, 108, 116, 139, 156, 173, 195,
139; a bibliothecis, a studiis, 142; Chief 206, 226, 288, 296, 326, 330, 338
Secretary to H., 5, 96, 101, 105, 114 Tineius Rufus, Q. (cos. 127), governor of
f., 125 £, 205, 330; dismissed, 5, 138 Thrace, 161, 233; of Judaea, 161, 233,
£, 141, 142, 143; his Caesars, 3, 5, 17, 259, 268, 270, 274
31,96, 108, 114 f., 121, 125 £, 139; Tiridates, King of Armenia, 69
on Augustus, 96, 108, 147, 183, 200, Titinius Capito, C. Octavius, Chief
203; Tiberius, 139; Caligula, 121; Secretary, 39; gave readings, 56
Claudius, 121; Nero, 249, 328; Titus, Titus, the emperor, 10, 19, 79, 121, 125,
121, 125 £; Domitian, 17, 31; may 154, 196, 299; in Judaea, 12 £, 229,
have transmitted private letters of H., 270; censor, 14; buildings at Rome,
110 17; death of, 15
Sufenas Verus, P. (cos. c. 132), governed Tra(h)ii, of Italica, 12
Lycia-Pamphylia, 261 Trajan, the Emperor, 4, 9, 58, 86, 106,
Sulla, L. Cornelius, the Dictator, 229 l l l f . , 122, 132, 144, 152, 160, 197,
Sulpicius Similis, Ser., Guard Prefect, 67, 198, 207, 208, 211, 344; his father,
93, 95, 96 12, 37, 65; mother, 56, 108; wife, 16;
386
INDEX
sister, 16, 64, 68; niece Matidia, 42; legate of Galatia, 226, 342
grand-niece Sabina, 2, 16, 42; H.'s Trypho, Jewish refugee, 271
guardian, 16, 25 £; commanded legion Tullius Varro, P. {cos. 127), commander
in Spain, 18, 25 f.> 27; perhaps of Vlth legion, 124
governed Pannonia, 27, 31, 32, 318; Tyndaris, at Phaselis, 261
legate of Upper Germany, 36; adopted
by Nerva, 36, 65, 77; his accession, Ulpia Marciana, Trajan's sister, 308, 310;
38, 85; created Horse Guards, 38 f.; her daughter, 16, 64; deified, 64, 107,
on northern frontiers, 39 f; his 110
frontier works in Germany, 116, 117; Ulpian, the jurist, quotes H. on Berytus,
army policy, 117, 118, 120; his 230
consulships, 102; adventus in AD 99, Ulpii, ofltalica, 12, 13, 201
40, 94; Pliny's Pangeyric on, 45 f.; Ulpius Domesticus, athlete, 279
Pliny's letters to, 39, 45, 65, 84, 127, Ulpius Traianus, M. {cos. 70?), Trajan's
156 £, 157 f, 159, 162; his expan- father, 308, 310; uncle of H.'s father,
sionist policy, 116; First Dacian War, 12, 14; in Judaea, 12 £; his wife
46 f£; Second, 49 f£; paid for H.'s Marcia, 13; governor of Syria, 13;
games, 49, 99; his Parthian War, 65 proconsul of Asia, 14, 30; deified, 323
f£, 99, 144, 153, 154, 175, 225; Ummidius Quadratus, C. {cos. 118), his
emulated Alexander, 72, 73, 75, 78, father-in-law, 92, 201; governed Lower
131; potential successors to, 50 £, 75, Moesia, 92, 93, 101, 173; lost favour
78; awards of consulships, 103, 195; with H., 296
took title proconsul, 113; supposed
intention to adopt H., 54, 61; called Valerius Asiaticus, D. {cos. II ord. 46),
Optimus, 55; fond of hunting, 25; of from Gaul, 13; his descendant, 30
boys, 40 f£; of wine, 40 f£, 47, 80, Valerius Eudaemon, with H. in AD 117,
299; his butler, 80; friends and 79, 197; procurator at Alexandria, 79,
supporters, Cornelius Palma, 38; Julius 197; ab epistulis Graecis, 197, 216;
Frontinus, 37, 38, 42; Julius Servianus, procurator in Asia, 216; lost H.'s
37,39, 46, 51; Julius Ursus, 37, 38, favour, 281; Prefect of Egypt, 353
47; Licinius Sura, 27, 37, 42, 46; Valerius Flaccus, poet, 15
Sosius Senecio, 38; buildings at Rome, Valerius Macedo, Q., of Vienne, declined
17, 56, 64 £, 97, 110, 111, 124; senatorial rank, 146
Column, 65, 100, 191, 283; bluff Valerius Maximus, writer, perhaps
image, 56; promoted Greeks, 63, 160, Spanish, 23
166, 305, 338; policy on Christians, Valerius Maximus, Sex. Quinctilius,
127, 157; on Britain, 130; 'adopted' advised by Pliny, 57; corrector in
H., 77, 80, 81; his death, 77, 80; Greece, 57, 60, 62
remains taken to Rome, 79 £; deified, Valerius Messalla Corvinus, M. {cos. ord.
82,99, 111, 153, 166, 191; on 31 BC), proposed title for Augustus,
Beneventum Arch, 191; his conquests 200
abandoned by H., 1, 78, 84 £, 87, 88, Valerius Proculus, L., prefect of fleet in
96 £, 303; posthumous triumph, 99, Egypt, 243; levied troops, 274
328
Trebatius Priscus, M. {cos. 108), 54 Varenus Rufus, delinquent proconsul,
Trebellius Rufus, Q., of Tolosa, archon at 159
Athens, 64 Vegetius, on army reforms, 119 £
Trebicius Decianus, M. Valerius, magister Velleius Lucullus cet., P., at Ephesus,
of the Arvals, 93 309
Trebius Germanus, L. {cos. c. 124), Ventidius, P. {cos. 43 BC), 72
governor of Britain, 342 Venutius, Briton, 130
Trebius Maximus, C. {cos. 122), 342 Verginius Rufus, L. {cos. Ill ord. 97), 33
Trebius Sergianus, C. {cos. ord. 132), £, 35, 36
387
INDEX
Verres, C , notorious governor, 190 42; not liked by H., 78, 300; on
Verres, consul under H., 190 Rome's empire, 116, 133 f.
Vespasian, the emperor, 10, 19, 28, 30, Vitellius, A., the emperor, 18
35, 62, 74, 79, 154, 196, 197, 207, Vitrasius Flamininus, L. (cos. 122),
235, 281; in Judaea, 12 £, 77; governed Transpadana, 199, 279 f.
favoured Spain, 13, 22; censor, 14; Voconius, poet, friend of H., 193
buildings at Rome, 17, 219; death of, Voconius Saxa Fidus, Q. (cos. 146),
15, 299 levied troops, 274
Vettius Latro, M., tribune in II Adiutrix, Voconius Victor, friend of Martial, 193
53 f., 189; procurator of Sicily and Vologaeses, Parthian prince, 73
Cottian Alps, 189; of Caesariensis, Vologaeses III , Parthian king, 65, 78,
205 153, 220, 225, 229, 287, 346 f.
Vettius Valens, M., legionary legate, 288 Vologaeses IV, Parthian king, 346
Vettulenus Civica Cerialis, C. (cos. c. 76),
18 f. Xenophon, his Anabasis, 155, 263; his
Vettulenus Cerialis, Sex. (cos. c. 73), in Symposium, 185; his home at Scillus,
Judaea, 12 181 £
Vibius Crispus, Q. (cos. II74), archon at Xerxes, Persian king, destroyed temples
Athens, 64 in Greece, 186
Vibius Sabinus, L. (cos. 97), Sabina's Xiphilinus, John, summarised Cassius
father, 16, 45, 308, 310 Dio, 68, 71, 87, 344; on Julius
Vibius Varus, T. (cos. ord. 134), 260, 280 Servianus, 325
Victor, see Aurelius Victor
Violentilla, young widow, 20 Zeno, father of King Polemo, 160
Virgil, H. allegedly consulted his Aeneid, Zonaras, on Julius Servianus, 325
GEOGRAPHICAL
Single mentions in lists and references to places of origin (e.g. 'Dio of Prusa') have
mostly been omitted; also references to Rome, except for individual buildings. Ancient
rather than modern names have been used in most cases.
Abae, 186 Aequum, 101

Abasci, 225 Aezani, 198
Abea, 181 Africa, 14, 45, 54, 67, 114, 115, 144,
Abudiacum, 120 150, 151 ff, 192, 202 ff, 216, 231,
Abusina, 116 233, 257, 263, 294, 304
Acalissus, 261 Agrae, 175
Acarnania, 61 Agri Decumates, 115
Achaia, 14, 57, 63, 81, 88, 172, 178, Alani, 9, 86, 287 f.
180, 182, 218, 266, 281 Alauna, 128, 138, 274
Achilles, Dromos of, 264 Alban Hills, 17, 30
Actium, 58, 180, 186, 218 Albani, 69, 225, 287, 288
Adana, 260 Alexandria (Egypt), 4, 72, 79, 101, 104,
Adiabene, 71 f. 142, 151, 153, 157, 193, 197,217,
Ad Majores, 209 227 f., 235 ff., 242 f, 247, 250, 252
Adria, see Hadria f, 256 f., 259, 260, 274, 287
Adriatic, 198, 253 Alexandria (Troad), 57, 164, 282
Aeclanum, 191 Alps, 144, 145, 198
Aegean, 262 Alutus, R., 85
Aelia Capitolina, see Jerusalem Amasia, 155, 156
Aequicoli, 198 Amastris, 156 f.
388
INDEX
Ambitarvium, 121 Arsinoe (Egypt), 246
Ambracia, Gulf of, 58, 61 Ascalon, 272
Amisus, 156, 264, 266 Ascanius, Lake, 159
Ammaedara, 209 Asia, Asia Minor, 8, 14, 18, 29, 30, 36,
Amphilochia, 61 59, 64, 68, 89, 125 ff, 145, 159, 161
Anatolia, 83, 154,269,274 ff, 183, 187,205,208,211,216,
Anava, R., 130 217, 220 f, 224, 226, 230, 233, 235,
Anazarbus, 260 246, 261, 262, 266, 282, 295, 303,
Ancona, 198 305, 344
Ancyra, 83 f., 158, 221, 274 Aspendus, 261
Anio, R., 192 Assyria, 71, 73, 78, 324
Antinoopolis, 6, 249 ff, 263, 306 Asturia, 18, 21
Antioch (Pisidia), 224, 233 Asturica, 149
Antioch (Syria), 42, 68, 71, 74, 75, 77 Astypalaea, 85, 223
ff., 83, 151, 154, 226 ff., 230, 259, Athens, 2, 3, 6, 8, 17, 30, 46, 48, 52,
324 57, 58, 59, 62 ff., 66, 68, 89, 105,
Antium, 200, 201 109, 133, 159, 166, 171, 174 ff., 182
Antonine Wall, 304 ff., 186, 193, 194, 197, 201 f, 205,
Apamea (Bithynia), 67, 158 f. 215 ff., 221, 223, 228, 250, 254, 255,
Apamea (Phrygia), 223, 345 262 ff., 276 ff, 279, 283, 292, 305,
Aphrodisias, 105 309, 336, 344, 351
Apollinopolis, 101 Athens (Pontus), 263
Apollonia (Asia), 164 Atlantic, 209
Apollonia (Cyrenaica), 153 Attalia, 261
Apri, 161 Auderienses, 121
Apsarus, 263 Augusta Taurinorum, 45
Apsilae, 69, 225 Augusta Vindelicum, 120
Apta, 144 f. Aurasius, Mt., 209
Apulum, 86, 91
Aquae Cutiliae, 15 Babylon, 73, 74
Aquae Mattiacae, 37 f., 121 Bactrians, 225
Aquae Sulis, 125, 139 Baetica, 12, 13 f., 19 f, 21 ff., 28, 48,
Aquileia, 199, 203, 216, 226 55, 96, 144, 149, 169, 180, 192, 218,
Aquincum, 31 f, 52 £, 90, 318 243, 264, 337
Aquitania, 14, 21, 53, 142 Baetis, R., 21 f., 24, 73
Arabia, 51, 52, 66 f, 88, 212, 214, 216, Bagradas, R., 152, 207, 208
230, 231, 233 f, 251, 268, 269, 272, Baiae, 87, 299, 300
280 Balkans, 83, 274, 279
Arbela, 71 Barca, 292
Area, 225 Barcino, 13, 54, 55, 89, 146, 192
Arcadia, 179, 253, 255 Bassiana, 90
Archelais, 224 Batava Castra, 121
Arelate, 4, 107, 146, 193,251 Batavi, 39, 83, 89, 121, 134 f., 137, 143
Argaeus, Mt., 225 Batnae, 70
Argos, 178 f., 181, 260 Belgica, 21, 38, 40, 121
Ariminum, 92 Beneventum, 58, 191
Armenia, 65, 66, 68 ff., 72, 73, 78, 79, Berenice (Cyrenaica), 152
83, 97, 100, 153 ff., 225, 287, 288, Berenice (Egypt), 246, 254
289 Berytus, 33, 74, 227, 230, 233
Arretium, 45 Berzovia, 85
Arsamosata, 69 Bethar, 272, 275, 287
Arsanias, R., 69 Bethlehem, 276
Arsinoe (Cyrenaica), 152 Bilbilis, 23, 146
389
INDEX
Bithynia, 2, 46, 60, 67, 84, 88, 157 ff, Carpathians, 84
160, 180, 253, 255, 262, 306, 344; Carteia, 21
see also Carthage, Carthaginians, 10, 21, 22, 115,
Pontus-Bithynia 151, 152, 205 £, 207, 253
Bithynium, 158, 179 £, 185, 247, 253, Casius, Mt., 68, 230
262 Caspian Gates, 288
Black Sea, 4, 61, 85, 90, 91, 156, 253, Cassiope, 60
263 £ Castellum Tidditanorum, 208
Bodotria, see Forth Castra Regina, 116
Boeotia, 62, 179, 184 ff., 255, 281, 322 Cataractonium, 130, 138
Bonna, 50 Caucasus, Mt., 69, 225
Borysthenes, R., 61, 86 Caudus, 180 £
Bosporani, 69 Cayster, R., 172, 221
Bosporus (Crimea), 86, 156, 160, 161, Celaenae, 223
264 Celsa, 146, 149
Bostra, 231, 233 Centuripae, 189
Bremenium, 134 Cephallenia, 187, 263
Brigantes, 130 Cephisus, R. (Eleusis), 177, 215
Britain, Britons, 1, 9, 14, 17 £, 32, 35, Cephisus, R. (Phocis), 186
40, 50, 53, 80,90, 101, 104, 113, Cetium, 120
115, 119, 122, 123 ff., 142, 143, 146, Chaboras, R., 72
148, 150, 152, 154, 173, 192,202, Chaeronea, 62
209, 257, 268, 269, 273 £, 283, 296, Chatti, 19, 115, 150
304, 331, 342, 359 Chersonesus Taurica, 156
Brixia, 53 Chersonesus, Thracian, 161, 336
Brundisium, 58, 65, 189 China, 133, 332
Bruttium, 190 Chios, 170 £, 194, 281
Bulla Regia, 207 Choba, 213
Buthrotum, 58 Cibalae, 90
Byblus, 227 £ Cilicia, 76, 78, 226, 259 ff, 266, 274
Byzantium, 85, 157, 178 Cilurnum, 134
Cimbri, 40
Caesaraugusta, 17, 149 Cingulum, 198
Caesarea (Cappadocia), 225 Cirta, 203, 208, 219
Caesarea (Judaea), 233 £, 259, 271 Cithaeron, Mt., 184
Caesarea (Mauretania), 213 Claros, 171, 337 £
Caicus, R., 166, 167 £ Claudianus Mons, 254
Calagurris, 23, 149 Claudiopolis, see Bithynium
Caledonians, 15, 32, 128 Clota, see Clyde
Callatis, 86 Clunia, 149
Camerinum, 128, 138 Clyde, Firth of, 130, 304
Campania, 87, 104 £, 214, 330 Cnidus, 173
Canninefates, 121 Coela, 161, 336
Canopus, 193, 235, 242 £, 253, 285 Colchi, 69
Cantabrians, 21, 144, 149 Colonia Agrippinensis, 37 £, 50, 113,
Caparcotna, 268 115, 122
Cappadocia, 4, 66, 69, 70, 83, 101, 124, Colonia Canopitana, 207
153 ff, 157, 160, 161, 173, 214, 224 Colophon, 171
£, 257, 263 £, 266, 287 £ Colossae, 223
Capri, 139 Comana, 224
Capsa, 208 Commagene, 62, 177, 217, 225, 228
Caria, 105, 160, 223 Comum, 53, 198 £
Carnuntum, 32, 90, 290 Concordia, 199
390
INDEX
Confluentes, 121 Dioscurias, 263
Copais, Lake, 186 Docimium, 223
Coptus, 235, 254 Dorylaeum, 223
Corduba, 13, 19, 21, 22 £, 28, 55, 67, Drobeta, 48, 91
102, 149, 180, 201, 328, 337 Dura Europus, 72
Coria, 134, 137 Dyrrachium, 58, 188, 189
Corinth, 24, 178, 182, 189, 292, 355
Corinthian Gulf, 58, 187 Eburacum, 124, 125, 130, 134
Corone, 180 £, Edessa, 70, 73, 154,
Coronea, 186,281,322 Egypt, 6, 9, 67, 72, 74, 77, 79, 80, 82 £,
Corydalla, 261 91, 100 £, 105 £, 108, 110, 119, 142,
Cos, 172 £ 143, 154, 168, 173, 178, 180, 185,
CottianAlps, 145, 189,205 193, 197, 203, 209, 214, 216, 217,
Crete, 152 f., 180 221 £, 224, 227, 230, 233, 234 ff,
Crete-Cyrene, 266 259, 266, 268, 274, 276, 280, 285,
Crimea, 156, 161,264 287, 296, 302, 333, 353
Ctesiphon, 72, 73, 78, 153 Elba, 96
Cupra Maritima, 198 Elegia, 69, 154,288
Cures Sabini, 33 Elephantine, 243, 250
Curium, 252 Eleusis, 174, 175 ff, 215 £, 217, 221,
Cyclades, 174 222, 252, 254, 255, 283, 302
Cyprus, 73, 74, 154, 230, 252, 269 Elis, 181
Cyrenaica, 73, 74, 80, 152, 230, 233, Emerita, 149
241, 269, 292, 306 Emona, 92
Cyrene, 74, 152 £, 281, 292 En Geddi, 270, 271, 272
Cyrrhus, 182, 216, 217 Ephesus, 14, 15, 108, 159, 160, 168,
Cyzicus, 159, 162 f£, 262, 336 170 ff, 181, 205, 221 £, 261 £, 263,
266, 271,309, 350 £, 355 £
Dacia, Dacians, 9, 17 £, 19, 40, 46 ff, Epidaurum, 32
50 ff, 56, 61, 66, 67, 68, 73, 75, 80 Epidaurus, 60, 178, 180, 266, 292
£, 83, 84 ff, 87, 130, 191, 212, 279, Epirus, 58 ff, 178, 187
299, 328; Dacia Inferior, 90 ff; Dacia Erythrae, 170 £
Superior, 90 £, 101, 202, 217, 274, Ethiopia, 250, 304
279; Dacia Porolissensis, 91 £ Etna, Mt., 189, 205
Dalmatia, 32, 101, 274, 279 £ Etruria, 22, 45, 124, 196, 199
Damascus, 227, 274 Euphrates, R., 1, 65, 68, 69, 72, 78,
Danube, R., 1, 17, 18, 27, 29, 31 £, 33, 150, 151, 154 ff, 171 £, 225, 304
36, 40, 48, 49, 50, 65, 66, 69, 77, 80, Euryalus, 133
84 ff, 89 £, 91, 96, 97, 104, 114, Eurymedon, R., 261
121, 128, 143, 158, 161, 259, 264,
273, 274, 279, 290, 304 Fanum Cocidi, 138
Daphne, 68, 75, 83, 153 Faventia, 87, 198
Dardania, 280 Fayum, 299
DeadSea, 231,270, 272 Fenland, 138
Delphi, 2, 61 £, 85, 105, 169, 171, 186 Firmum, 198
£, 192, 218 £, 262 Flavia Neapolis, 271
Delta, Nile, 239, 250 Flavia Solva, 121
Diana Veteranorum, 212 Flaviopolis, 260
Didyma, 222, 281 Formiae, 196
Dindymus, Mt., 168 Forth, Firth of, 130, 304
Dieburg, 121 Forum Hadriani, 121, 125
Diocaesarea (Cilicia) , 260; and see Forum Iulii, 13
Sepphoris Fucinus, Lacus, 198
391
INDEX
Fulginiae, 100 Hadrian's Wall, 1, 6, 8, 123, 125, 128
Furnos, 151 £ ff, 150, 173,209,283,304,331
Hadrianutherae, 164, 166, 233, 262,
Gabii, 196 306, 357
Gades, 10 ff., 21, 23, 104, 149, 253 Hadrumetum, 207, 208
Galatia, 65, 70, 83 £, 157, 224, 226, Halicanum, 90,
229, 260 Halicarnassus, 173
Galilee, 229, 232, 268, 271, 272 Hatra, 7A £
Gallia Narbonensis, see Narbonensis Hebron, 272, 276
Garsaura, 224 Helicon, Mt., 184 £
Gaugamela, 71 f. Heliopolis (Egypt), 243 ff
Gaul, 19, 21, 33, 55, 92, 104, 113, 141, Heliopolis (Syria), 68, 230
142 £, 144, 193 £, 235, 295, 334 Hellenes, Hellenism, see Greece, Greeks
Gaza, 233 £, 235, 272, 276 Heniochi, 69, 154,225
Gemellae, 209 £ Heptanomia, 250, 252, 253, 254
Gerasa, 231 Heraclea Lyncestis, 189
Germanicopolis, 260 Heraclea Pontica, 156, 158, 253
Germans, Germany, 18, 27, 36, 40, 90, Herculaneum, 15
113 ff, 128, 133, 134, 143, 208, 211, Hercyne, R., 186
226, 290; Lower Germany, 39, 45, Hermione, 178
102, 115, 121, 122, 124, 274, 296, Hermopolis, 247, 249
319, 342; Upper Germany, 33, 36, 37, Hermoupolite nome, 101
116, 125, 130, 150, 199,209 Hermunduri, 150
Germe, 168 Hermus, R., 168
Gesoriacum, 125 Herodium, 272
Gigthis, 207 Hierapolis (Phrygia), 223
Granicus, R., 164 Hierasus, R., 86
Graupian Mountain, 15, 32, 128 Hippo Regius, 203
Greece, Greeks, 2, 3, 5, 6, 13, 14 £, 16 Hispalis, 12, 21, 149
£, 24, 25, 30, 46, 56, 57 ff, 74, 81, Hispania Citerior, Tarraconensis, see
83 £, 101, 105, 108, 109, 121, 133, Tarraconensis
142, 152, 160, 161, 166, 168 £, 172, Histria, 86
173, 175 ff, 189, 193 £, 197, 205, Hittites, 224
214, 215 ff, 221, 222, 225, 227 £, Hodna, Mt., 209, 210
229 £, 231 £, 233, 237, 238, 243 £, Humber, R., 125
246 ff, 250, 253 ff, 259, 260, 261, Hyampolis, 186
263 ff, 271, 278, 279, 281, 282, 292, Hydaspes, R., 130 £
302, 305, 306, 312 £, 330, 338, 339, Hyllus, R., 168
344, 355, 357 Hyssus, 155
Grinario, 115
Iberi, 69, 225 £, 264, 287, 288
Habitancum, 134 Iconium, 224
Hadria, 12, 133, 198, 299, 325, 332, Icosium, 213
356 Ida, Mt., 281
'Hadriana', 164 Igilgili, 213
'Hadriane', 154 £, 164, 170, 231, 260 Ilerda, 149
Hadriani, 164, 262, 303, 306, 357 Ilipa, 24
Hadriania, 164, 262, 306 Ilissus, R., 183, 219
Hadrianopolis (Cyrenaica), 152, 233, Ilium, 164, 171, 253
306 Illyricum, 274, 279
Hadrianopolis (Thrace), 161 India, 73, 131, 145
'Hadrianopolis', 154 £, 166, 197, 205 £, Indus, R., 130 £
224, 250 Inn, R., 121
392
INDEX
Ionia, 159, 168, 171, 187 Leucos Limen, 254
Ionian Sea, 190 Libya, see Cyrenaica
Iris, R., 155 Lindum, 138
Isauria, 260 Liria, 17, 35
Isthmus (of Corinth), 133, 178 Londinium, 125
Italica, 12, 13 £, 16, 19 f., 21 f£, 147, Lorch, R., 116
148, 149, 180, 182, 198, 201, 206 £, Lugdunensis, 21
328 Lugdunum, 113, 142, 149
Italy, 12, 15, 22, 23, 55£, 80, 97, 99, Luguvalium, 124, 130
113, 133, 190 f£, 197 f£, 203, 207, Lupiae, 340
213, 303, 340 Lusitania, 21, 149
Ithaca, 187 Lycabettus, Mt., 184
Ituna, see Solway Lycaonia, 260
Lycia, 48, 68, 171, 221, 223, 261
Jazyges, 52, 85, 86, 90, 92, 287, 297; see Lycia-Pamphylia, 84, 216, 251, 266, 320
also Sarmatians Lycosura, 181
Jericho, 272 Lycus, R. (Cappadocia), 154
Jerusalem, 2, 112, 228 £, 232 £, 237, Lydia, 159, 168, 169, 197
268 f£, 272, 275, 276, 306, 352
Jews, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 72, 7A, 75, 79, 80, Maas, R., 117
101, 142, 152, 227 £, 228 f£, 237, Macedonia, Macedonians, 25, 72, 75,
238, 239, 247, 259, 268 f£, 287, 288, 78, 97, 106, 175 £, 178, 179, 186,
296, 302, 346, 351 f£, 359 187, 189,261,262,266,279
Jordan, R., 51 Macestus, R., 164, 166
Judaea, 2, 6, 12, 52, 53, 75, 77, 78 £, Machelones, 69, 225
80, 120 £, 161,214,231 f£, 235, Mactaris, 23, 207, 294, 342
237, 251,259, 268 f£, 306 Maeander, R., 222
Julian Alps, 92 Magnesia on the Maeander, 171
Juliopolis, 84 Main, R., 115, 121
Mainz, see Moguntiacum
Kanovium, 138 Malaca, 21, 243
Kefar Harruba, 271 Malva, 91
Kushans, 225 Mantinea, 179 £, 253
Mantinium, 158, 180
Labici, 213 Marathon, 64
Lacedaemon, Laconia, 181, 182, 186 Marcomanni, 27
Lambaesis, 209 f£, 216 Mardi, 70
Lancaster, 138 Maritime Alps, 274
Lanuvium, 196, 248, 285 £ Marmara, Sea of, 157, 159
Laodicea on the Lycus, 159 £, 222 £ Maryport, see Alauna
Laodicea on Sea, 75 Massilia, 266
Lares, 207 Matilica, 273
Larinum, 334 Mattiaci, 121
Latium, 87, 196, 213, 285 Mauretania, 79, 80, 84, 86, 91, 148,
Lauter, R., 115 150, 154, 203 f£, 210, 212, 213, 261,
Lavinium, 196 296
Lazi, 225 Media, 287
Lebadea, 186, 255 Mediolanum, 200
Legio, 21, 25, 148, 149 Megalopolis, 181
Lepcis Magna, 207 Megara, 177 f., 189
Lesbos, 168, 251 Melissa, 223, 345
Leucas, 61 Melitene, 69, 154, 225
Leuce, 264 Membressa, 152
393
INDEX
Memphis, 74, 244, 245 f. Nicopolis (Cappadocia), 154
Mesene, 73, 225, 231 Nicopolis (Egypt), 243
Mesopotamia, 68, 70, 72, 73, 74, 75, 78, Nicopolis (Epirus), 58 ff, 64, 107, 182,
97, 154, 230, 186, 187, 219
Messenia, 179, 180 f. Nida, 121
Messina, 190 Nile, R., 3, 74, 221, 222, 237 ff, 243,
Metropolis, 345 245 ff, 287, 306
Miletopolis, 164 Nineveh, 71
Miletus, 171, 172 f., 216, 222, 243, 281 Nisibis, 70, 71, 73
Miliana, R., 207 Norba, 149
Misenum, 65, 74, 91, 274 Noricum, 114, 120 £
Modin, 270 North Sea, 121
Moeris, Lake, 246 North Tyne, R., 134
Moesia, 17, 32, 40, 46, 61, 222, 279; Notium, 171
Lower, 33, 37, 47 £, 67, 84, 86, 90, Noviomagus, 124
91 f., 93, 123, 161, 173, 198,202, Numantia, 117, 149
257, 274, 279, 296; Upper, 48, 67, Numidia, 52, 93, 151 £, 169, 170, 203,
74, 90, 199, 279 £, 318, 326, 342 205, 207, 209 ff, 219, 222, 265
Mogentiana, 90 Nysa, 169, 222
Moguntiacum, 18, 36, 37 £, 113, 115,
208 Odenwald, 115
Moldavia, 84 Oenoanda, 171
Moors, 47, 67, 73, 75, 79, 80, 150, 151, Oescus, 33
252 Olba, 260
Mopsucrene, 83 Olbia, 61, 86
Mopsuestia, 260 Oltenia, 84
Moselle, R., 121 Olympia, 115, 181, 197,216
Municipium Iasorum, 90 Olympus, Mt. (Bithynia), 159, 164
Muntenia, 84 Ombos, 235
Mursa, 90, 305 £ Orchomeus, 186
Mursella, 90 Oresta, 161
Mycene, 178 £ Orontes, R., 68, 230
Myos Hormos, 254 Osrhoene, 69 £, 78, 154,225
Mysia, 164, 166, 184, 233, 262, 303, Ostia, 56, 149, 190, 196
306 Ovilava, 120
Mytilene, 167 £ Oxus, R., 225
Oxyrhyncus, 222, 228, 246 £, 252, 324
Nabataeans, 51, 66 Ozogardana, 72
Nacrasa, 168
Naples, Bay of, 191; and see Neapolis Pactolus, R., 168
Napoca, 91 Padus, R., 197 £
Narbo Martius, 142, 143, 146 Palestine, see Judaea
Narbonensis, 13, 16, 21, 45, 55, 145, Pallantium, 179
203 Palmyra, 230 £, 347
Naucratis, 237, 241, 243, 253 £ Pamphylia, 223, 261
Neapolis, 105, 253, 266 Pannonia, 27, 31 £, 36, 40, 48, 50, 78,
Negev, 51 89, 92, 128, 233, 279, 280, 290 £,
Nemausus, 13, 16, 144 ff., 274, 295, 297, 305 £, 318; Upper, 52, 67, 89,
334 90, 101, 192, 296, 327; Lower, 52 ff,
Neocaesarea, 154 £ 67, 86, 90, 91 £, 101, 120, 128, 145,
Nicaea, 84, 157 ff., 162 177, 189
Nicer, R., 115 Paphlagonia, 158, 216
Nicomedia, 60, 65, 157, 162, 180, 238 Pappa-Tiberiopolis, 224
INDEX
Parium, 164 Qiryath 'Arabaya, 270
Parnassus, Mt., 186 Quiza, 213
Parnes, Mt., 183
Parthia, Parthians, 9, 13, 18, 65, 66 ff, Raetia, 18, 79, 114, 116, 120 £, 209
78, 81, 84, 88, 89, 99, 100, 144, 150, Ratae, 138
151, 153 f., 175, 192, 203, 220, 225, Ravenna, 31
229, 230, 231,246, 287, 346 f. Reate, 12 f.
Patara, 223 Red Sea, 254
Patavium, 198 Rhebas, R., 253, 349
Patras, 62 Rhine, R., 18, 27, 31, 37 ff., 40, 50, 77,
Peloponnese, 60, 61, 175, 177 ff., 182 114, 115, 116 f, 121, 124, 143,304
Pelusium, 233, 235 ff Rhinocoloura, 235
Pentapolis, 152 Rhodes, 159, 172 ff., 221, 261, 264, 338
Pergamum, 14, 28, 30, 45, 48, 63, 84, Rhone, R., 142
162, 166 ff, 169, 172,221,326 Rhyndacus, R., 164
Perge, 261 Rome, Arch of Constantine, 284; Arch of
Persian Gulf, 73, 225, 231 Titus, 112; Aventine, 27; Basilica
Persians, 61, 187, 223, 251, 255, 261, Julia, 29; Basilicia Ulpia, 65; Campus
303 Martius, 97, 99, 110, 111,283;
Petra, 231,234 Capitol, 15, 18, 36, 40, 50, 93, 107 f;
Phalarus, R., 186 castra peregrina, 139; Circus Maximus,
Phaselis, 261 27; Colosseum, 15, 17, 112; Forum,
Phasis, R., 264 112; Forum of Augustus, 111; Forum
Pheia, 181 of Peace, 17, 184, 344; Forum
Philadelphia, 231 Ulpium, 56, 65, 97 f, 110, 124;
Philae, 237, 250, 257 Gemonian Steps, 51; Mausoleum of
Philippi, 229 Augustus, 99, 111, 283; Monte
Phocis, 186 Testaccio, 24; Palace, Palatine, 17, 30
Phoenicians, 227 f., 36, 40, 197, 284, 354; Pantheon, 6,
Phrygia, 159, 160, 168, 170, 198, 219, 111, 191; pomerium, 111 f.; Pons
222, 223 f., 265 Aelius, 283; Saepta Julia, 110, 111; T.
Picenum, 22, 138, 198, 299 of Concord, 108; T. of Janus, 192; T.
Piraeus, 133 of Venus and Rome, 2, 112, 191, 245,
Piroboridava, 86 282 f; Trajan's Column, 65, 99 f.,
Plataea, 187, 218, 219 191,283; Via Appia, 55
Pompeii, 15 Roxolani, 84, 92; and see also Sarmatians
PonsAelius, 131 f, 134,283
Pontus, 155 f., 160, 169 Sabine Hills, 192
Pontus-Bithynia, 49, 57, 62, 65, 66, 84, Saepinum, 45, 191
127, 156 ff., 172,266 Saittae, 168
Porolissum, 91 Salamis (Greece), 255
Portus Magnus, 213 Salamis (Cyprus), 74
Praeneste, 96, 206 Saldae, 213
Priene, 222 Salla, 90
Proconessus, 162 Salmantica, 149
Prusa ad Olympum, 159 Samaritans, 271
Ptolemais (Cyrenaica), 292 Samnium, 22, 45, 190 f.
Ptolemais (Egypt), 237, 250, 253 Samos, 171
Puteoli, 3, 190, 300 Samosata, 225, 227
Pylos, 181 Sanigae, 225
Pyramus, R., 260 Sardes, 159, 164, 168 ff., 172
Pyrenees, 142 Sardinia, 203
Sarmatians, 9, 27, 31, 32, 40, 52 f., 81,
395
INDEX
84, 86, 104, 287, 289; and see also Tarraco, 21, 142, 144, 146 ff, 153, 166,
Jazyges, Roxolani 334
Sarmizegethusa, 51, 90 Tarraconensis, 13, 21, 22, 23, 27, 35,
Satala, 69, 154,225,288 147
Sauromatae, 69 Tarsus, 83, 185, 229, 260
Save, R., 90 Tauchira, 152
Scillus, 181 £ Taunenses, 121
Scythia, 85, 143, 161 Taunus, Mt., 115
Scythopolis, 276 Taurus, Mt., 83, 259
Sebastia, 154 Taygetus, Mt., 181
Segisama, 149 Tebtunis, 108, 252
Selinus, 76, 79 f. Tegea, 180
Seleucia in Pieria, 68, 151, 230, 259 Tekoa, 271
Seleucia on the Tigris, 73 Tempe, 187, 193
Sepphoris, 229, 232 Tentyra, 235
Shechem, 271 Teos, 171
Siarum, 24, 192 Tergeste, 128
Sicily, 133, 189 £, 203, 205, 216, 219, Termessus, 171
266, 320 Terventum, 191
Side, 223, 251 Teutones, 40
Sidyma, 48 Thaenae, 207
Simitthu, 265 Thames, R., 125, 139
Singara, 72 Thebes (Boeotia), 179, 255
Sinope, 155, 156, 157 Thebes (Egypt), 6, 243, 250
Smyrna, 4, 160, 164, 169, 170 £, 172, Theches, Mt., 155
221, 222, 223, 262, 266, 282 Thermopylae, 62, 133
Snowdonia, 138 Thespiae, 184 £, 219
Solway Firth, 128, 130, 198 Thessalonice, 262
Solyma, Mt., 261 Thessaly, 186, 219
Sophon, Lake, 157 Theveste, 151, 152,207
Spain, 10ff.,13, 18, 19, 21ff,27, 36, Thibilis, 208, 343
46, 104, 114, 117, 125, 141, 142 ff, Thisbe, 186
192, 203, 205, 253, 274, 334 Thrace, 84, 102, 156, 159, 160, 161,
Sparta, 63, 179, 180 £, 182, 190, 217 165, 168, 233, 266, 279
ff, 221, 243, 289, 339 Thuburbo Maius, 54, 205, 208
Stratonicea, 166, 197, 198 Thyatira, 168
Suebi, 18, 27, 290 Tiber, R., 13, 111, 196,253
Sugambri, 143 Tiberias, 234
Sybaris, 340 Tibur, 6, 8, 13, 24, 107, 110, 187, 191,
Syene, 243, 250 192 £, 199, 214, 243, 256, 282, 285,
Synnada, 170, 223 289, 306, 314
Syracuse, 133, 189, 356 Ticinum, 62
Syria, 2, 12, 13, 29, 31, 33, 35 £, 46, Tigris, R., 71 ff, 78
59, 65, 67 £, 74, 75 ff, 80, 81, 83, Tipasa, 213
88, 101, 106, 151, 153 f., 157, 182, Tiryns, 179
199, 211, 214, 216, 217, 218, 225 ff, Tivoli, see Tibur
230 £, 251, 259, 260, 266, 268, 274, Tmolus, Mt., 170
276, 296 Tolosa, 64
Syria Palaestina, 275, 276, 296 Tomis, 86, 90
Tralles, 222, 279
Tarentum, 190, 266 Transpadana, 199 £, 274
Tarquinii, 124 Transylvania, 90
Tarracina, 87, 196 Trapezus, 155 £,263,288
INDEX
Trebula Mutuesca, 197 f. Vetera, 124
Treveri, 121 ViaAemilia, 198
Trimontium, 134 ViaAppia, 58,65, 190 £
Trocetta, 170 Via Domitia, 142, 146
Troesmis, 85 ViaEgnatia, 58, 85, 189
Troezen, 178 Via Flaminia, 92, 198
Troy, 164 Via Latina, 70
Tuder, 12, 13 ViaSalaria, 197 £
Tungri, 121, 330 Via Sebaste, 224
Turdetanians, 22 Via Traiana (Arabia), 231
Turris Tamalleni, 207 f. Via Traiana (Italy), 58, 65, 190
Tweed, R., 134 Via Valeria Tiburtina, 274
Tyana, 83 Vicetia, 198
Tyne, R., 125, 130 ff, 283 Vienne, 30, 146
Tyras, 86 Viminacium, 90
Tyre, 227 £, 229 Vindobona, 274
Vindolanda, 134 ff, 331, 332
Ucubi, 13, 201 Viroconium, 138
Ulpianum, 90 Virunum, 120
Umbria, 12, 22, 100 Vogelsberg, 115
Uthina, 207 Vologesias, 231
Utica, 206 f.
Western Desert, 241
Valley of the Tombs, 250 Wetterau, 115, 150
Van, L., 70
Vasio, 13, 146 Zaghouan, 206
Veii, 196 Zama, 207
Venusia, 191 Zarai, 212
Vesontio, 33 Zephyrium, 260
Vesuvius, Mt., 15 Zilchi, 225
RELIGION
Aion, 112 Christians, 5, 71, 125 ff, 157, 183, 215,

Amphictyons, 186 £, 192, 218 £ 269, 271 £, 276
Antinous, 3, 6, 247 ff, 259, 262, 280, circumcision, 229, 233, 259, 270 £, 306
283, 284 £, 306 Cocidius, 137 £
Aphrodite, 185, 276 Concord, 108
Apis, 142, 245, 251 Cupra, 198
Apollo, 62, 155, 171, 178, 186, 222,
255, 282, 284 Dea Dia, 93, 108, 196
Artemis, 108, 180, 181, 222, 238 Deania, 231
Arval Brethren, 18, 93, 95, 107 £, 196 Demeter, 164, 175, 178, 215, 254, 255
Asclepius, 166, 167, 175, 245, 255 Diana, 27, 248, 284
Athena, 64, \66, 167, 238, 254, 259, Dioscuri, 175, 180, 238, 276
263 Dionysia, 182, 264
Atum, 243 Dionysus, 83, 248
Bacchus, 276 Eleusinian Mysteries, 175 ff, 183, 215,

Bes, 250 222, 252, 262 £, 283
397
INDEX
Eros, 184 f. Olympieion, 219, 228, 265 £, 279, 283
Olympios, 2, 6, 219 £, 221, 222
feriae Latinae, 30 Orcus, 301
Fortuna Redux, 93 Osiris, 245, 247, 248, 254, 255 £, 285
Hadriania, 164, 260, 266 Pan, 248

Harpocrates, 238 Panhellenia, 266
Hebe, 178 Pantheon (Athens), 219, 265, 276
Hera, 178 Pantheon (Rome), 6, 191
Hercules, 104, 175, 178, 192, 252, 255, Parilia, 111 £, 113
279, 284 Parthenon, 63, 266
Hermes, 241, 247, 248, 253 Philesius, 155,263
hierogrammateis, 244, 245, 256 Poseidon, 179
Horus, 243, 257 £, 276, 285, 287 Ptah, 142, 245
Imhotep, 245 quindecimviru 18, 45

imperial cult, 23, 45, 64, 82, 83 £, 99 £,
107, 110, 132, 144, 145, 147, 148, Rabbis, 234, 269, 270, 275
159, 166 f., 170 £, 173, 178, 181, Re-Harachte, 243, 255, 289
183, 191, 196, 220, 221, 222, 224, Rhea, 264
231, 234, 245, 254 £, 257, 260, Roma, 166, 173
261 £, 294
Isis, 238, 239, 250, 255, 285 Salii, 201
Sarapis, 166, 238, 242, 245, 276
Janus, 27, 154, 192, septemviru 45, 48, 57, 60, 62, 67, 146,
Jupiter, 2, 15, 17, 36, 45, 68, 93, 104, 325
144, 209, 232, 254, 276, 303 Seth, 287
Silvanus, 138, 145, 284
Kore, 175 Sun God, 83, 112,243
Luna, 112 Temple at Jerusalem, 2, 228 £, 232 £,

270, 276
Mars, 104, 138, 303 Thoth, 247, 256
Memnon, 6, 250 ff. Trophonius, 186, 255
Minerva, 50, 64
Venus and Rome, 2, 111 f., 191, 245,
Neptune, 130 282 £, 288
Nike, 104 Victoria, 287
Oceanus, 130 £ Zeus, 2, 42, 162 ff., 166, 170, 173, 181,
Olympian Zeus, 2, 64, 181, 183, 219, 187, 198, 238, 241, 254, 262
222, 228, 233, 264 £ Zeus Casius, 68
MISCELLANEOUS
ab epistulis, 5, 39, 96, 101, 105, 108, coinage, 6, 7, 8, 70, 73, 81, 93, 95, 97,
114 £, 125 £, 138 £, 141, 142 £, 182, 104, 112, 113, 120, 122, 123, 141,
197, 205, 216 £, 281, 290, 292, 330, 142, 148, 149, 154, 161, 189, 191,
355, 357 199, 213, 215, 222, 223 £,225,
agriculture, 115, 138, 208 £,210 226 £, 231 £, 233, 237 ff, 256,
alimenta, 56, 99 257 £, 259, 262, 279, 280, 287, 288,
289, 290 £, 302, 324, 335
398
INDEX
colonial elites, 13, 19, 54 £, 62, 67, 103, 180, 181 £, 184 £, 199, 223, 240 ff,
146, 203 262, 284, 294, 333
comites Augusti, 46, 47, 67, 68, 79, 95,
115, 121, 125, 146, 152, 159, 161, Latin right, 207, 305
165 ff., 188, 203 £, 212, 215 £, 220, legions, 31, 150, 169; I Italica, 187; I
223, 240, 246, 251 £, 257, 274, 279, Minervia, 49, 50, 52; II Adiutrix, 17,
281, 301, 325, 330, 343 31 £, 52, 53 £, 128, 189, 199; II
consuls, consulship, 6, 19, 30, 33, 35, Augusta, 146; II Traiana, 49, 153, 243;
47, 51, 60, 63, 71, 75, 84, 85, 86, 87, III Augusta, 52, 93, 151, 169, 205, 209
88, 89, 92, 93, 102, 103 £, 114, 124, ff; III Cyrenaica, 105, 153, 211, 280;
158 £, 191, 195 £, 201, 203, 220, III Gallica, 211, 218, 226, 274; IV
226, 227, 233, 246, 252, 261, 265 £, Flavia, 86; IV Scythica, 36, 226, 268,
273, 280, 281, 289, 290, 295, 296, 274; V Macedonica, 33, 48, 84, 86; VI
304 £, 334, 338, 353 Ferrata, 67, 70, 268; VI Victrix, 124,
125, 130, 132; VII Claudia, 74; VII
Epitome de Caesaribus, 6, 16 £, 37, Gemina, 18, 21, 123, 148, 149; IX
119 £, 158, 185, 199,302,303, Hispana, 123 £, 130, 274, 288, 341; X
306 Fretensis, 12, 223, 233, 274, 276, 352;
X Gemina, 274; XI Claudia, 48; XII
frontiers, 1, 111 £, 115 ff., 123, 128 ff, Fulminata, 124, 154, 225, 288; XIII
150, 151 £, 153, 173, 202, 209 ff, Gemina, 91,101; XIV Gemina, 101;
304, 312 £, 331 £, 358 XV Apollinaris, 14, 154, 288; XVI
Flavia, 36; XXI Rapax, 27; XXII
Historia Augusta (HA), 4, 10, 16 £, Deiotariana, 105, 243, 268; XXII
23, 24, 30, 37, 38, 40, 42, 46, 47, Primigenia, 37, 115, 208; XXX Ulpia,
48, 50, 52, 53, 54, 61, 68, 75, 49
77 ff, 86 ff, 91, 94, 95, 97, 100,
102 £, 105, 107, 111, 112, 113, 115, philosophers, philosophy, 58 ff, 106 £,
116, 117 ff, 123, 133 £, 138 ff, 142, 109, 182£, 260
144 f., 147, 148, 149 £, 151, 154, Praetorian Guard, 18, 36, 38 £, 46, 47,
164, 174, 175, 177, 182, 189, 191, 67, 6 9 , 7 7 , 9 1 , 93, 95 £, 114, 125,
192, 194 £, 196, 198, 199 £, 202, 139 £, 153, 169 £, 173 £, 205, 216,
205 £, 220, 224, 225 ff, 230, 233, 223, 243, 272, 296
234, 235 ff, 240, 243, 246, 247 ff,
259, 263, 265, 281, 288, 289 ff, Second Sophistic, 193, 313
294, 297, 299, 300, 301, 302, 304 £, senate, senators, 4, 10, 12, 13, 14, 19,
306, 313 28 ff, 33, 35 £, 42 ff, 48 £, 54, 57,
homosexuality, 2 £, 42, 158, 169 £, 185, 63, 80 £, 86, 92, 95, 102, 145 £, 200,
215 f., 247 ff, 213, 251 £, 272, 287, 292, 294, 296,
hunting, 2 £, 9, 24 £, 38, 61, 87, 92, 304 £
137 £, 145, 146, 159, 160, 164 ff, Stoics, 28 £, 60
399

Birley - Hadrian The Restless Emperor

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HADRIAN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

Reprinted 1998 (three times)

Transferred to Digital Printing 2005

© 1997 Anthony R. Birley

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Frontispiece Bronze statue of Hadrian from Tel Shalem in Judaea.

The Roman empire in Hadrian's reign xviii

Frontispiece: National Museum, Jerusalem

The Roman empire: in Hadrian's reign

'The most remarkable of all the Roman emperors': so a historian of imperial

Plate 2 Plouna, Trajan's Km press {bus? from Museo Vuticano, Rome)

Phne J Matidia, 1 hulrian's mother-in-law

THE YOUNG GENERAL

I Minervia, of which Hadrian took command in summer 105, was presumably

THE PARTHIAN WAR

THE NEW RULER

Trajan's 'letter of adoption' reached Hadrian in Syria on 9 August 117. He was

Plate 6 Hadrian's 'adoption' celebrated by the imperial coinage

I have mounted with Trajan to Heaven in a white-horsed chariot and

Plate 7 Hadrian's return to Rome in 118: ADVENTVS AVG.

to put in an appearance. Servianus is unlikely to have been enthusiastic about

Plate 8 The burning of the tax debt tablets

TO THE GERMAN FRONTIER

Plate 9 Hadrian on the move: the imperial galley

Plate 10 Hadrian in the west: DISCIPLIN. AVG.

been on the decline, owing to the neglectfulness of previous emperors' - incuria

Plate 11 Hadrian in Germany: EXERCITVS GERMANICVS

Having completely transformed the soldiers, in royal fashion, he made for

Plate 13 Head of Hadrian found in the Thames at London (British Museum)

Map 3 Hadrian's Wall

Plate 14 Oceanus: a commemoration of Hadrian's crossing to Britain

P t o 75? Hadrian in Britain: BRITANNIA

Plate 20 Hadrian and the army of Britain:

'After settling matters in Britain he crossed to Gaul', the HA biographer reports.

ego nolo Caesar esse

Scythicas pati pruinas.

ego nolo Florus esse

A free rendering might run as follows:

- To tramp round the Britons, weak at the knees,

In the Scythian frosts to freeze.

I don't want to be Florus, please,

RETURN TO THE EAST

^ V ^ ^ U _ J ^ ) Metropolis Pessinusj ^ > (

" *~ ^myr^TsaW J 0 Synnada ^ <b\j o

Mz/> 4 Asia Minor

After setting the scene by describing how he accompanied 'the greatest of

There he was with his companions, armed, surrounding the Emperor -

Hadrian the Emperor, so it is related, once struck one of his attendants in

Galen supplies maddeningly few details, but at least he shows us Hadrian

Map 5 Greece and Macedonia

Plate 21 Hadrian the restorer of Achaia

An emperor's letter to the city of Heraclea Lyncestis in Macedonia, written

Plate 22 Hadrian the restorer of Italy

The best-known work in Latin literature devoted to Sicily was Cicero's

He completed the building of his Tiburtine villa in wonderful fashion, in

Then comes the anecdote.